The Organizational-Locational Structure of Industry in Israel and Its Effects on National Spatial Policies
Abstract
The organization of production in multiplant firms and the location of their top management has important repercussions for Israel's national policy of industrial dispersal. This paper presents an empirical analysis of: (a) the location pattern of the headquarters of the 124 largest industrial companies in Israel; (b) the location pattern of head offices controlling the manufacturing activity in Israel's development towns; and (c) the spatial organization of Israel's six largest industrial enterprises. Our analysis shows that control units of large industrial firms in Israel tend to be concentrated in central regions, primarily in the Tel-Aviv metropolis. However, the existence of a substantial number of head offices in the rural-cooperative sector of development regions shows that the dispersal of such functions is possible if social or ideological motives for retaining control functions in peripheral areas exist. The two factors found to be most clearly related to the extent of external control of industry in development towns are the plant size distribution and its distance from the nearest metropolitan area. The most remarkable conclusion drawn from the analysis of specific companies is the relatively small contribution to employment in development regions by the government military-associated industrial companies. This might be partly due to the low response of these government enterprises to the incentives of the spatial policy which are directed mainly toward the private sector.
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