Problematyka definiowania zmian w tendencjach lokalizacyjnych przedsiębiorstw przemysłowych w dobie globalizacji

Globalization brings important effects in the strategic and spatial behaviour of enterprises, especially industrial enterprises. The contributing factors are organizational (production fragmentation), economic (search for other sources of economy optimization), technological (which influence the cost of transport and communication and facilitate running business in many countries), and political (systematic reduction of barriers in global goods, services and capital flow). As a consequence of mutual relations between these factors, in global economy the bonds between foreign trade, investments, capital flow and new technologies application are tightening - and so are spatial relations. Conditions of enterprise functioning, modified by globalization processes, call for a change in the scientific approach to the problems of development and functioning of industry in the 21st century, with special emphasis put on subjective and objective aspects and on precise labelling and re-defining phenomena, or defining the unknown ones that emerge as the result of changes. Thus this paper focuses on such phenomena connected with the new industry-location tendencies as production de-materialization, disindustrialization or relocation (regarded as the process of dislocation or outsourcing). In the conclusions, attention is drawn to the problem of measurement of relocation processes.