Abstract
Research background: The literature overview shows a blank space regarding the effects of ownership on the determination of enterprises' spatial distribution. Various papers identify differences between determinants of the spatial distribution of foreign direct investments, exporters in foreign ownership, and domestically owned exporters; however, they mostly agree on the role of big cities, economic centres, and state of infrastructure as well as historical patterns.
 Purpose of the article: The article focuses on the spatial distribution analysis of enterprise units from their owner's perspective on the empirical evidence from all 79 districts of the Slovak Republic. Special attention is given to the category of the least developed districts.
 Methods: Within the presented article, the authors investigate the characteristics of the regional spatial distribution of business entities concerning standard ownership categories using the cluster analysis. The presented approach is twofold: firstly, the authors investigate the share of individual ownership types on the district level, and secondly, the number of enterprises by ownership categories is adjusted to 100,000 inhabitants. Cluster analysis and methods of spatial statistics are applied in both approaches.
 Findings & value added: The main results show a relation between the district's inclusion into the group of the least developed districts and enterprise ownership characteristics in these districts mainly through the relative underrepresentation of the secluded inland, foreign and international types of ownership, as well as their geographical clustering. The results of the presented research can be used in policy-making targeting business activity in underdeveloped districts. At the same time, the results provide basis for limited theoretical generalisations based on a single-country case study with regard to principles of business ownership structures development.
Highlights
The global economy has been undergoing rapid structural changes
An initial analysis of business entities based on eight registered ownership types showed that the dominating ownership type is the private domestic one oscillating between 68,4% for the Bratislava I (B1) district and 96,7% for the district of Námestovo (NO), with the central tendency for Slovakia 91%
Through the application of the D-index method, we determined the optimal number of clusters, in both cases four, as the D-index second differences value shown a significant peak for this count with which we proceeded in further research
Summary
Along with other social sciences, is confronted with new approaches explaining these changes. Regional development theories try to identify the factors and describe the processes and mechanisms underlying individual economic activities' localisation. They try to answer the question of why such large regional disparities arise both globally and locally. One theoretical stream of regional development emphasises the importance of innovation, new technologies, clusters, learning regions. An important feature of globalisation is the increasing interdependence of individual types of international and national economic relations: trade, foreign direct investment, labor movement, capital movement, technology transfer, and others (Zinecker et al, 2021a; Zinecker et al, 2021b; Meluzín et al, 2021). As Porter (1990) states, competitive industries are not evenly distributed concerning competitiveness in a nation with regard to cluster development
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
