The Old and the Stubborn? Firm Characteristics and Relocation in the Netherlands

This study gives some insight into the relationships between the spatial environment, firm characteristics and long term existence of firms in the Netherlands. A logit model is employed to investigate the locational difference of firms, considering firm characteristics such as age, size, region and network. The main findings are that (long-term) continuation of the location and firm size are positively associated with long-term existence of firms

Organizational Ecology and Industrial Organization; Old Firms in the Netherlands

This paper will be written as a part of my Ph.D. research. Old firms in the Netherlands' which is a research project in the theme of the demography of firms in the research school Systems, Organizations and Management from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. The demography of firms is relatively new in the Spatial Sciences but nevertheless this is a subject with a long history in other fields of research. The demography of firms is the study of the changes in the population of firms with the use of demographic tools. This field of research can broaden our knowledge of regional-economic dynamics of firms. Other disciplines that investigated this subject are mostly interdisciplinary, using combinations of methods and theories from sociology, economy, demography and geography. In this paper, the focus will not be on the theoretical background of firm demography, but on the dynamics of the survival of firms. This is part of the 'narrow' definition of firm demographics in Economic Geography as mentioned above. This definition includes birth, death, migration and survival in the population of firms. In this paper, the emphasis will be on the exploration of the definition of 'old' in the context of the firm lifecycle. This will be done using a chronological description of Dutch firm activity in the period from the industrial revolution until the present, and by a representation of the location of firm establishments in maps during this period. Furthermore, a list provided by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce of the 500 oldest establishments in the Netherlands at present will be compared with these maps to get more insight in the 'survival rates of firms in the different industrial sectors. One of the difficulties here is the definition of ''old'' in the context of the firm lifecycle. When is a firm old? Is it possible to characterise a firm on the basis of age in years, or can this only be done in relationship to the age of the attributes (products, employees, organisation or establishment) which form the company? To define the firm just by age in years can be problematic because in this way no attention will be given to the stage of development a firm is in. This development of the firm can be seen when one looks at the age of a company according to the product-lifecycle, in which a firm is not mature until it reaches the fourth stage of this cycle. Right now, this last view is less useful, either because practice shows that some firms are in different stages of the product-lifecycle at the same time, some firms stay in the same phase constantly or some firms start their product-cycle in a different phase than the first. Another difficulty is the question of what constitutes a firm. Does the company's name, the product it produces, or the legal status the company has, constitute it as being a firm? The list of the 500 oldest firms used in this paper is based on the age of the settlement. Of course, this is not the most perfect solution for this problem, but it does give an impression of the age and concentration of firms in the Netherlands in the time period from the industrial revolution until the present. Also, the problem with this data is that it does not include data on the firms' migration. In addition, it would be better to compare different lists from different institutions, but at present these data are not available. The goal of analysing this data is to get more insight into the definition of the concepts ''firm'' and ''old'', as used in the Ph.D. research project "Old firms in the Netherlands." A second goal is to get a preliminary idea of how the population of old firms is dispersed over the Netherlands, how the population is divided over the different industrial sectors and how the age pyramid of this population of firms is composed. In this context it is important to know how the division of the firms was during the Industrial Revolution in the Netherlands and whether or not the current situation is comparable. This last comparison will provide an insight into the different rates of survival of firms in the different industrial sectors.

The Importance of Place in Corporate Identity an Investigation on the Presence of Old Dutch Firms on the Internet

This paper investigates how old Dutch firms display their corporate identity on the Internet, with special attention paid to location and place. Several scholars argue that the Internet would create the ‘end-of-geography’. Current empirical investigation found that incumbent firms display a strong sense-of-place in the presentation of ‘self’ on their websites. Location is important for old firms' images, underlining the importance of embeddedness. Location remains important when firms compete on the ‘global level’ on the Internet. This paper therefore contributes to the understanding of place and local embeddedness of firms in the ‘global internet space’

An empirical study on the relationship between the spatial environment and the survival of old firms in the Netherlands

This is an empirical research on old firms in the Netherlands where old firms are defined als those firms that were founded before 1851 and still exist today. The study is divided in two main parts. The first part is descriptive and provides information on the firm population at stake. The regional differences concerning age, size, sector and percentage of the total firm population are shown. In the second part, an analysis on the outcome of a survey conducted at the research population is presented. The analysis focuses on the relation between firm characteristics and the spatial environment and whether or not similarities can be identified in these old firms. Overall, economic theory suggests that forces external to the firm such as strong competition, lagging demand, or technological drawbacks are the dominant determinants of firm closure. In this line of reasoning it may be claimed that low competition, growing demand and innovative behaviour might stimulate survival chances of firms on the long run. There are few sources on firm's activities during the life course of individual firm and on the influence of the spatial environment on these firm activities. This study might shed some light on the relationship between the spatial environment, specific firm characteristics and long term survival of firms in the Netherlands. Insight in the background of 'long-term' survival of firms can be of importance to industrial organization research and firm demography and also to the economic and regional policymaking in understanding and stimulating regional dynamics. Furthermore it might help to identify indicators of more successful firm strategies.

The inert firm; why old firms show a stickiness to their location

This paper investigates the tendency of older firms to show stickiness to their home-region or fixed location, with the increase of age (in years since founding), as found in earlier research. Empirical evidence supporting this argument is found from a telephone survey under the population of old firms in the Netherlands. In the current paper an analysis is done to determine which other firm characteristics -next to age in years-, influence this stickiness to place; such as innovative behaviour, network relationships, market, size (in number of employees), region and location type. This analysis is done on written questionnaires of 179 firms in the Netherlands, 37 of these firms are specifically labelled as ‘old firms’ (founded before 1851). Tested is whether inert behaviour, which according to the theory of structural inertia increases with age, also has an influence on the location of firms. Furthermore, the relationship between the spatial environment and other firm characteristics is investigated.

Development of trade blocs in an era of globalization: Proximity still matters

This article describes the development of international trade blocs world wide from the 1950s till 2010. We updated the data on international trade flows and introduced a new trade bloc variable based on the intramax hierarchical clustering technique, which defines trade blocs on actual trade intensities and not - as was preciously done - by traditional geographic and political factors: such as the division into a triad of economic regions based on North America, the European Union and Japan. Nevertheless, the results of intramax hierarchical clustering indicate that actual trade flows are very much influenced by geographical and political factors; after all, proximity matters. To explain how mechanism of globalization changed trade patterns over the last half century and how - in the end - proximity is one of the most explanatory variables - we furthermore apply multivariate analysis with gravity-model based variables aims to explain which geographical, political and cultural factors do contribute to the (importance of) proximity in trade partners. In addition we also apply GIS to analyze patterns and proximity issues.

Residential Mobility of Older Adults in the Dutch Housing Market: Do Individual Characteristics and Housing Attributes Have an Effect on Mobility?

The ageing of the population will change many societies in unprecedented ways. The changing age composition does not only create a burden on existing income systems and health care systems, but also affects the geographical mobility of populations. The objective of this paper is to provide some first insights into the moving behaviour of older adults in the Netherlands. By using data of the Housing Research Netherlands (HRN) 2009 survey, it was possible to investigate whether or not later-life residential mobility is influenced by individual characteristics and housing attributes. The responses of migrants and non-migrants are compared by conducting several two-way-chi-square analyses. The results of these descriptive analyses demonstrate that migrants indeed differ from non-migrants and that these differences are mostly related to housing attributes

The firm relocation decision: a logit model

This paper deals with the relocation of firms. There are indications from former research, that age, size and market are determinants of relocated companies. This paper aims to demonstrate that mobile firms are younger, more export oriented and more rapidly growing. With the use of two theories, Location theory and the theory of Organisational Ecology, it is tried to construct a theoretical background for an age-related bias in the decision to relocate. Location theorieexplain from different perspectives the location of economic activities. Spatial movements of firms represent only a small part of industrial change, but it does influence the overall change of production and employment levels. Organisational Ecology deals with the causes of vital events (birth, death and mobility) of firms in the organisational population, because mobility is one of the visible outcomes of the selection process. The theoretical constructs for this decision are tested with the use of the Cranet database that provides information on company relocation in eighteen European countries in 1996-1999. First, a general analysis of the phenomenon in the European countries is presented. Second, the connection between relocation and age, size and market of companies in three example countries (Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) is described on the basis of the literary review. The findings are in general that when firms grow older they are too large and too embedded in the spatial environment to move. Younger firms are more likely to relocate, because they are expected to have higher growth rates and therefore need more space, one incentive to relocate.