Plant closure and institutional modernisation. Siemens microelectronics in the North East

Abstract

The Siemens plant in North Tyneside, England gave the pretext for a range of local agencies to act together, to modernise part of the regional institutional infrastructure. This improvement meant that when the investment closed, and technological, organisational and skill modernisation by the firm in the region ceased, the region continued to experience the benefits from the temporary presence of the investment. This paper uses the case of Siemens to problematise the conventional understanding of the ephemerality of branch‐plant investments to understand how they can usefully contribute to the modernisation of peripheral industrial regions within the UK.