Small Firms, Industrial Reorganisation, and Space: The Case of the UK High-Fidelity Audio Sector

In recent years a series of persuasive arguments have been developed that describe the growth of new industrial spaces. This new geography of production is seen to stem from the attempts of companies to respond to a new, more flexible, marketplace by becoming more vertically disintegrated through a reliance on a series of dense transactional supply and innovation linkages with spatially proximate firms. To date, much of the debate about these processes has rested on an empirical base which is rather limited in both its spatial and sectoral coverage. In this paper the debate is added to through reference to a recent survey of the UK high-fidelity audio sector. The impact of changing market demand and competitive pressures on the sector is outlined. The responses of firms to these pressures have resulted in a series of changes to corporate organisational structures. These changes are presented in the form of a broad-based sectoral analysis. In the concluding sections of the paper the possible spatial ramifications of the findings are dealt with. It is shown that many recent theoretical assertions do not accurately describe and predict the processes of change presently characterising the sector.