Business failure in an age of globalisation: interpreting the rise and fall of the LG project in Wales, 1995-2006

Gooberman, Leon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-4704 2020. Business failure in an age of globalisation: interpreting the rise and fall of the LG project in Wales, 1995-2006. Business History 62 (2) , pp. 240-260. 10.1080/00076791.2018.1426748

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Abstract

In 1996 the South Korean conglomerate LG announced a £1.67 billion investment in Wales to manufacture consumer electronics and semiconductors. The project was to be Europe’s largest inward investment project and LG was offered the UK Government’s most generous grants. However, the semiconductor plant was built but never entered production while the consumer electronics facility closed in stages up to 2006. This article responds to calls for a ‘new business history’ by using the ill-fated investment as a case study of business failure, arguing that narrow firm-specific factors do not fully explain LG’s failure in Wales. The article finds instead that analysis of distorted institutional environments in South Korea and Wales, linked to rentseeking behaviour by LG, provides a fuller answer.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	0007-6791
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 January 2018
Date of Acceptance:	5 January 2018
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2023 06:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/108077

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