Regional office mobility: the case of corporate control in Singapore and Hong Kong

This paper examines regional office mobility through a case study of Hong K ong and Singapore. The analysis is based on a database combining government -collected statistics in the case of Hong Kong and original survey data in the case of Singapore. These data provide a profile of the regional office population in both centres including parent company nationality, business s ector affiliation, geographical responsibility and location evaluation. The se indicators and case studies of actual location decisions indicate that H ong Kong remains the dominant location of regional offices for East Asian m arkets, whereas Singapore is preferred by regional offices focused on South east Asia. The paper concludes that the two centres tend to be complementar y rather than competing regional office locations for the Pacific Asian reg ion. The low level of mobility exhibited by regional offices is related to the specific characteristics of the region and the changing organisational context of regional offices. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.