Company-led strategies in defence sector restructuring: Implications for local economic development

This paper examines defence sector restructuring as effected through the networks of Lancashire-based companies involved in defence production. Evidence of restructuring is drawn from the Lancashire Defence Survey. The data provides the starting point for discussion of the strategies of those companies contracted to supply products and services, and employees contracted to supply skills, in the military production process. Transaction cost theory is applied to these changing contractual relations and implications for local economic development organisations are drawn out.