Abstract
Company relocation processes are a very complex field, with a major impact on economy on a local, regional and global scale. On the local scale, company relocation occurs very often across major metropolitan areas. Research on this subject has been conducted both in Western Europe and the USA for several decades now, yet studies in this area in Central and Eastern Europe are limited. The current study focuses on company relocation in major metropolitan areas in Poland in the years 2001–2013. The objective of the article is, therefore, to describe the processes of relocation of business entities in five Polish metropolitan areas from the point of view of the characteristics of the companies relocating. The considered characteristics include company age, its size and type of business. The question of the distance of the relocation is also considered. Our research has confirmed findings noted by researchers in the Netherlands and the USA in terms of companies’ decision to relocate depending on tenure and size, as well as sectors that tend to be most mobile. At the same time, our study prompts new questions which need to be answered by advanced research in the future. Particularly important is the question of the economic consequences of relocation processes, at both a local and a broader, regional level. It is therefore essential to carry out further in-depth research.
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- 1.
In the three metropolitan areas—Kraków, Wrocław and Poznań—data were gathered from both the core area (city centre) and the external zone (ring). In the latter case, this concerned companies with more than nine employees, and for the core, more than 49 employees. For two metropolitan areas—Warszawa and Łódź—no data were collected for urban cores, but only for companies in the external zone with more than nine employees. This was dictated by limitations on time and organisation in collecting and analysing such a large amount of data. The authors are aware, however, that this approach entailed a considerable simplification, since according to the incubator hypothesis, the centres of metropolitan areas are home to many companies which then move to suburban districts. Adopting a method of data collection that ignores the centres of these two metropolitan areas can have an impact on the interpretation of results. We therefore endeavoured to keep this limitation in mind whenever drawing conclusions from the results.
- 2.
In Poland, there is currently no extensive source of company contact information that could be used for a larger number of administrative units. Tax offices have access to such data, but do not make it available for research purposes. Furthermore, each tax office operates on an individual basis, and it would therefore be necessary to obtain permission for access to data from the relevant office for each location.
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Acknowledgements
The chapter was written as part of a research project financed by Poland’s National Science Centre: The processes of relocation and spatial expansion of business in metropolitan areas, SONATA grant competition no. 192273, grant period 2012–2017.
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Dej, M., Jarczewski, W., Chlebicki, M. (2019). Relocation of Economic Activity Within Major Metropolitan Areas in Poland—Scale and Key Characteristics. In: Capik, P., Dej, M. (eds) Relocation of Economic Activity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92282-9_6
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