Abstract
Since the 1970s, a number of major corporations have located their corporate headquarters in rural and non-metropolitan areas. I interrogate this phenomenon, based on a case study of Lands’ End, a global apparel firm in Wisconsin. Much research has exposed how firms insulate themselves from claims made by workers and communities through organizational and spatial distance (i.e. global sourcing, casualization of employment structures). Corporate headquarters relocation presents a paradox, bringing key decision-makers in the global economy into new, face-to-face relationships with workers and communities. Negotiated against a radical transformation of local class structure, I argue that new forms of social regulation are emerging—in particular, a hybrid version of the Fordist-era company towns.
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Notes
Gary Comer, founder of Lands’ End, was ranked #244 on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world in 2004. He has a home in rural Wisconsin (Forbes, 2004).
The racial breakdown of workers at Lands’ End reflects the racial composition of Iowa County. In 2000, 98.5% of residents of Iowa County were white, non-Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).
Also, Holloway and Wheeler (1991) importantly note that the spatial organization of economic activities and of corporate headquarter location in particular are influenced by the nature of different industries, the nature of the urban system in a country, and different economic histories and business traditions. Some have mentioned that a rural image is also important for some firms’ marketing strategies, such as those of Lands’ End and L.L. Bean; however, this does not appear to be a critical factor in the location of corporate headquarters as firms can, for example, have their call center phones answered in rural Wisconsin with a Midwestern accent while their headquarters remain in Chicago, as Lands’ End did for 12 years before relocating to Dodgeville.
In the business, geography and sociology literature, analysis of the geographic dispersal of corporate headquarters to rural and non-metropolitan areas has thus considered how firms might best undertake such moves, analyzed how the emerging spatial reorganization affects cities from which firms move, or ignored the phenomenon completely.
This is not to suggest that some firms who have relocated their headquarters may not still maintain certain offices or departments in major cities; however, relocating corporate headquarters in rural and non-metropolitan areas, leaving perhaps the leanest office possible in global cities represents a significant geographic reorganization of economic activity, with implications for the cities they leave and, as we consider here, for the communities in which they locate.
In this paper, I employ a neo-Marxist definition of class. This perspective understands class differentiation materially in terms of ownership of the means of production while at the same recognizes that class locations are also negotiated ideologically as part of dynamically established regimes of accumulation and modes of social regulation.
This is not to suggest that an agricultural elite did not exist in the community before these changes occurred. However, this new elite represents increasing class differentiation as a new local class structure—resting on changing access to new means of production—emerges.
I use “his” to underline the patriarchal overtone this culture has historically imbued.
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Amy A. Quark is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Amy primarily studies the sociology of agriculture and rural communities and the sociology of economic change and development. She is currently working on two research projects, the first considering tensions along the global cotton commodity chain and the second examining neoliberal policy as it affects rural communities in Saskatchewan.
I would like to thank Jane L. Collins, Javier Auyero, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this article.
The data analyzed in this study have been collected as part a project funded by the Hatch Fund at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Quark, A.A. From Global Cities to the Lands’ End: The Relocation of Corporate Headquarters and the New Company Towns of Rural America. Qual Sociol 30, 21–40 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-006-9053-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-006-9053-6