Proposal for a Holistic Concept of Research into the Functioning of an Enterprise and Industry

In the process of shaping particular academic disciplines, there is a need to synthesise the existing research results and on their basis propose new methodological approaches and indicate the possibility of applying new directions of theoretic-cognitive and application research. This is the idea to which the theme and purpose of this paper refers. It proposes a new holistic research concept. The first part of the article reviews the hitherto research problems concerning the operation of an industrial plant (enterprise). Presented are the changing research concepts that initially treated the industrial plant as a landscape element, and then as a production plant affecting the processes of industry concentration, as well as socio-economic and cultural changes of the surroundings. In the second part, in the light of the theory of the dynamic system, the assumption was made that an industrial enterprise is not an isolated element of geographical space, but one of its functional components. Its role changes under the influence of endogenous and exogenous factors, as well as in the process of civilisation development. Using the idea of a dynamic system and the model of the functioning of geographical space, a new, holistic concept of research into the operation and development of an industrial enterprise is proposed. It includes various relationships: between the enterprise and the elements of geographical space (natural, socio-economic, cultural), between the rules of economic development, between different functional types of enterprises, competitive, between the categories of the environment, between the power elites and types of policies. The proposed model approach makes it possible to define various relations with the enterprise and allows for a comprehensive understanding of its functioning in a diversified surroundings, and it provides for the definition of a more precise strategy for its development.