Spatial Concentration of IT Corporation Headquarters

Abstract

This paper analyses spatial concentration of IT corporation headquarters (HQs) with the intention to identify the countries where IT corporation headquarters are concentrated. According to the research, from 2003 to 2011, the most dominant IT corporations had their headquarters in the USA, Japan and Taiwan, as these countries created the best conditions for their operations. In European countries, the highest number of company headquarters was reported in France, Germany and Switzerland. An analysis of the economic potential indicator showed that, over that period, IT corporations were growing dispersed in the global space. The phenomenon manifested itself by a drop in the number of corporations placing their headquarters in the USA and Japan, which translated into dispersed economic potential that, by the time, had been concentrated in these countries. Furthermore, newly emerging corporations from China, Ireland, India, the Netherlands, Mexico and Malaysia increased their importance in the sales structure. The high degree of economic concentration of IT corporations was confirmed by the synthetic metric of the economic potential, calculated on the basis of: the number of corporations, sales value, profit, the value of their assets and their market value.