The long-term development of modern economy depends to a great extent on the development of the information sector, as well as on the activities, phenomena and processes that pertain to the development and application of modern technologies, including information technologies, in various economic sectors, which contributes to transformations of corporate management methods. This article is aimed at providing an analysis of the formation of corporation Ericsson, one of the information companies that shape the modern world economy, in order to determine the changes of its economic potential and its evolution concerning newly adopted technologies.
The Knitting Factory “Jarlan” in Jarosław was established in 1972, when the country’s economy was centrally controlled. Initially, “Jarlan” comprised of four smaller plants, but in the process of shifting to market economy some of them were closed as they proved unprofitable. In 1992, the Factory was turned into a sole shareholder company of the Treasury. Subsequently, together with other companies in the clothing – knitting field, “Jarlan” became a part of the “Próchnik” holding, and in 2002 the controlling interest was purchased by Krzysztof Dajczak. Due to the nature of its production, women prevail among “Jarlan’s” employees. In the 1980’s, out of 3000 people employed, two-thirds were women. During the transformation period, employment was reduced to 982 people, 199 men and 783 women, which constituted only 28% of the 1980 employment level. The year 2000 was a breakthrough for “Jarlan”, which resulted from the difficulties that the “Próchnik” holding, to which the Factory belonged, was going through. The number of finished articles dropped significantly and the sales profits were the lowest in the company’s entire history – 11 million of estimated losses. Measures were undertaken to regain “Jarlan’s” financial fluency and its position on the market through winning new customers, especially abroad. As soon as 2002, the profits amounted to 1mln. Presently, the Knitting Factory “Jarlan” is an international company, selling their turtlenecks, round-neck sweaters, vests, cardigans and tunics mainly to England, Spain, Germany and France. Due to high quality products and varied sets of patterns and colours, the company is extremely competitive, which has been recognized by Polish customers as well.
Today, corporations play an important role in the global, national and local economy. Regardless of the business profile, degree of internationalisation or size, they participate in numerous economic processes, which is why they are the subject of research in geography of industry, especially in geography of enterprises. The main goal of the article is to review research related to corporations in Polish literature on the subject in the field of geography of industry. The author also aims at organising the concept of corporations, presenting closer their classifications, as well as indicating the place of research on corporations in geography. The preparation of the article began with a literature query, as well as an analysis of the existing data (desk research). As a result, the analysis of the concept of a corporation, various types of classifications and divisions of corporations, as well as a literature review of the subject in terms of the corporation’s research issues were made. As the research carried out indicates, in Polish literature on the issues of geography of industry, the researchers who concentrate on corporations look at the concentration of their head offices, theory and location factors, shaping processes and location of production, service and various branches, network connections, strategies implemented by corporations and their organisational forms, processes of corporation influence on international conditions for the development of domestic and regional systems and industrial enterprises, stimulation of inflow of foreign direct investment, the influence of corporations on the shaping of various industrial sectors, export relations, the role of cities in globalisation processes and the location of the corporation and their effects, as well as on corporate CSR activities.
The article presents a study of major IT corporations whose management authorities are based in EU member states. Its objective is to identify changes in the economic potential of the corporations in years 2004–2008 as well as factors which determine geographical distribution of IT corporations within the European Union. In order to prove the thesis and the objective, the following determining features have been used: changes in the potential of IT companies (number of companies, as well as the value of assets and market value), scope of company business operations (sales value), effectiveness of their operations (financial profit/loss figure) as well as correspondence between the type of operations and the performance of relevant corporations.
Development and rational use of human resources is a major foundation for the knowledge-based economy. Shaping a society based on knowledge depends on such factors as the outlayon research and development, the number of students, legal and economic instruments and soon. People are a crucial factor of this process, and its quality is related to the level of knowledge resources, skills, education and the quality of work organization. The present discussion analyzes the changes in the employment in research (B) and development (R) as a factor influencing the growth of the knowledge-based economy. The author assumes that employment in B+R activity is a measure of the potential which makes economy growth possible. The discussion is based on the examples of selected countries where the analysis of changes in B+R activity was conducted in the period 1995-2003. The analysis shows that the tendencies in the changes ofthe economic potential and research and development potential in the analyzed countries point to an increasing polarity in global economy. They significantly affect the introduction of the knowledge-based economy in the specified countries. It seems reasonable to assume thatlong-term economic growth is connected primarily to the development of human resources.
Supranational corporations have an impact on organizing the world’s economic, social, and cultural space by means of systems of network and production connections. Among 2000 top world corporations presented in The Global 2000 ranking dated 2008, published by Forbes, 130 corporations representing 6.5 % of the total of corporations featured in the ranking. This study contains an analysis of economic potential of the largest world IT corporations. It aims to find a definition of their diversification from the point of view of their potential, in the light of many features and the relationships between them, and to determine their ranking in the synthetic measure. In 2007, IT corporations in question generated the total of 2015.3 billion USD in sales, which represents a 6.8 % share in total sales volume of 2000 corporations presented in the ranking, generating the profit of 152.4 billion USD, which constitutes a 6.5 % share in total profits; however, the value of their assets reached 2100.4 billion USD, which represents just 1.8 % of all corporations’ assets, while the market value of corporations studied is 3115 billion USD, representing 8.1% of the market value of 2000 top world corporations. As preliminary research shows, high concentration of IT corporations is visible, which leads to a related diversification of the world space.
This article provides the study of the process of shaping supranational Apple Corporation. Anattempt was made to define the importance of the role in the development of the corporationplayed by Stave Jobs, its co-founder, as well as the role of Apple Corporation in forming theinformation society. The process of developing the company has been marked by an increase the number of employees, the market value, the assets value, and the sales, etc. Simultaneously, the marketdominance was established more and more intensively. The company operates in mostcountries of the world.
Korporacje informatyczne w okresie kryzysu, podobnie jak firmy innych branż, reagowały na zmieniające się warunki w zróżnicowany sposób. Przeprowadzone badania wskazują, że w latach 2003–2011 można wyróżnić trzy okresy rozwoju korporacji informatycznych: lata wzrostu gospodarczego (2003–2007), lata kryzysu (2007–2009) oraz okres ponownego wzrostu (2009–2011). Przedmiotem niniejszych rozważań będą wybrane korporacje informatyczne reprezentujące zróżnicowane rodzaje działalności informatycznej. Szczegółową analizą objęto dziewięć korporacji: Amazon. com, Apple, Ericsson, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia oraz Panasonic. W badaniach zmierzano do analizy i oceny zmian potencjału ekonomicznego tych wybranych korporacji.
EN
During the economic crisis, similarly to companies from other sectors, IT corporations varied in terms of their reactions to the transforming environment. According to research, between 2003 and 2011, 3 different phases of development in the sector can be identified: the economic growth (2003–2007), the crisis (2007–2009) and the phase of repeated growth (2009–2011). The paper focuses on a pool of IT corporations operating in different areas of IT. The author chose to focus on 9 corporations (Amazon.com, Apple, Ericsson, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic) to analyse and assess changes in their economic potential.
Przedmiotem artykułu jest analiza funkcjonowania korporacji Amazon.com, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem okresu kryzysu światowego. Natomiast jego celem jest wskazanie zmian potencjału ekonomicznego tej firmy oraz przedstawienie podejmowanych działań, które miały wzmocnić jej pozycję konkurencyjną i sytuację finansową podczas kryzysu gospodarczego. Przeprowadzone badania wskazują, że badana korporacja rozwijała się w sposób szybki i stały, co przejawiało się zarówno w poziomie zatrudnienia, jak i w wynikach finansowych. Amazon.com, w przeciwieństwie do większości korporacji różnych branż, także informatycznej, nie pogorszył wyników swojej działalności z powodu kryzysu światowego.
EN
The paper analyses operations of Amazon.com, with a particular focus on the period of the global crisis. The aim is identifying changes in its economic potential and presenting actions undertaken by Amazon.com in order to reinforce its competitiveness and financial condition during the crisis. The research conducted showed that the corporation was growing fast and steady, as proven by the number of its staff and its financial performance. Contrary to most corporations in a variety of business sectors, performance of Amazon.com did not deteriorate as a result of the global crisis.
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.
The article analyses the spatial concentration of world IT companies. They have been described in terms of their varied potential, types and extent of activity and the degree of global concentration. Research included the world’s top 100 largest IT companies, which jointly receive a revenue of USD 1.2 trillion, turning a profit of USD 140 billion. The revenue of the different companies ranged from USD 524.7 million to USD 97.0 billion. The leaders among those businesses are IBM Corporation, Verizon Communications, Deutsche Telekom and Samsung Electronics, which concentrate USD 313.0 billion, that is 25.9 per cent of the total revenue that the largest IT corporations receive. The joint profit of all the analysed IT companies is USD 140.1 billion and it ranges from USD 12.4 million to 11.2 billion. The corporations that make the highest profit are Microsoft, Samsung Electronics and IBM, which jointly earn USD 28.9 billion, which makes up 20.6 per cent of total profit. The analysed corporations are marked by a strong correlation between the revenue and profit ─ its index is 0.832.The analysed enterprises represent 8 types of business in the IT sector: telecommunication, hardware, software, semiconductors, telecommunication devices, services, distributors and Internet companies. The leaders among them are 24 telecommunication companies, whose joint revenue is USD 428.2 billion, that is 35.4 per cent of the total income, and the profit is USD 46.5 billion, that is 33.2 per cent of total profit. The United States has a high concentration of IT companies, 44 of which have reached 43.4 per cent of total revenue and 49.7 per cent of total profit. Companies located in Korea, Germany and Taiwan yield very high revenue and profit. Sixty-three companies from those four countries jointly yield USD 805.7 billion, that is 66.6 per cent of revenue, and USD 94.5 billion, that is 67.5 per cent of total profit. The least important in this respect are the companies located in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Turkey, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Indonesia, which jointly concentrate USD 22.5 billion, that is 1.9 per cent of revenue and USD 2.7 billion, that is 1.9 per cent of total profit.
The aim of the article is to define how the issue of entrepreneurship is tackled by authors of textbooks for high, vocational and technical schools. According to presented study, it is possible to observe that the majority of authors of the textbooks on the basics of entrepreneurship raise the issues of globalization and international corporations. Usually the issue of corporations is related to the issue of globalization in the world’s economy - with more or less details in different textbooks. The above mentioned issues can usually be found in the last chapters, which a student can treat as a guideline for what processes will take place in the world’s economy in the future. The awareness of these processes is crucial to students’ education and puts them in competitive position with relation to others who do not realize the full meaning of globalization in the world’s economy. It also allows for making rational decisions and finding one’s place in the developing world.
The purpose of the article is to present the analysis of the influence of economic crisis on the functioning of one of the Japanese IT corporations – Panasonic. The paper aims at specifying changes in Panasonic’s economic potential, and at presenting actions taken in order to improve its financial situation. After the crisis which took place in this part of the world in years 1997–1998, Panasonic (like many other corporations in Asia) introduced some mechanisms of protecting the company against the sudden loss of financial liquidity. Strong economic ties with European countries, as well as with the USA, resulted in significant deterioration in this corporation’s financial situation during the crisis in years 2007–2009. Nonetheless, the undertaken actions allowed it to remain one of the largest manufacturers of consumer and industrial electronics in the world.
The underlying role in the enhancement of globalization processes is held by transnational corporations which exert impact on the formation of market network systems for goods and services by means of locating their affiliates in global regional systems. The purpose of the paper is to present the analysis of Samsung Group formation processes. The Group’s business potential, impact range and production assortment diversification as well as increasing globalization trends in the world economy that have affected the formation and development of the analyzed corporation are analyzed. The Samsung Group is a significant element in globalization processes. As a result of operations carried out in various fields, the corporation has created its own business network enabling the cooperation of particular entities within the capital group. This is the basis for the corporation competitive advantage in the international market. By developing its operations the Samsung Group is an example of an entity that during its 70 years of business activities has become a conglomerate of a transnational nature owing to globalization processes resulting from the global economy evolution.