International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic ...

Introduction 19
stituent establishments comprise the statistical units of the statistical structure. In
delineating the statistical structure, functional or other groups in the organizational
structure may be ignored and the constituent units regrouped to form the units of the
statistical structure. For multi-establishment enterprises, the statistical structure may
not coincide with the legal structure in which ownership of assets is registered.
97. The source of information for production statistics and income statistics is
often the management and cost accounts of businesses. These accounts record operating
revenues earned from the sale of goods and services produced and the associated
costs, wages and salaries, depreciation and operating profits. Countries that are more
interested in the higher level of autonomy in the structure of enterprises than in the
geographical location of the activity may prefer to delineate and use the kind-of-activity
unit. On the other hand, if they are more interested in compiling comprehensive
production statistics at a subnational level of geographic detail, then it will be necessary
to delineate the smallest unit (a) that is as homogeneous as possible in terms of
activity and geography, and (b) for which statistics on revenues from the sale of goods
and services, associated costs, value added and gross fixed capital formation undertaken
can be compiled or estimated. This is the level at which the establishment (local
kind-of-activity unit) is delineated as the statistical unit.
98. Whenever the legal structure and the statistical construct based on production
units do not coincide, statistical agencies will need to articulate the statistical
structure and compile data with the help of surveys. The legal structure may consist
of units created purely for tax purposes that are completely irrelevant to the producing
units of the enterprise. However, if it is necessary to draw on tax records for the
required data or if survey data need to be supplemented with tax data, statistical agencies
will have to decide whether (a) they can find a way to map the legal and statistical
structure of the enterprise, or (b) they prefer to use the legal structure selectively as a
proxy for the statistical structure.
99. The statistical structure delineates and identifies the units about which data
are to be compiled. However, the data may have to be collected from higher- or lowerlevel
units, which are then described as collection entities. As a result of globalization,
some multinational global enterprises are keeping integrated accounting records at
the global or the regional levels only; it may thus be increasingly difficult to separate
and extract complete accounts for all the activities taking place within each domestic
economy if such data are not obtained from the main or regional head office of the
global enterprise.
5. National differences in selecting statistical units
100. An establishment undertakes an activity at or from a particular location.
Thus, the concept of the establishment combines two dimensions—an activity dimension
and a locality dimension. The concept is based on the assumption that the aim
of the statistical programme is to compile data that is classified both by activity and
by location, e.g., by geographical region. However, ISIC can be used to classify many
other variables needed to analyse production and industrial performance. In examining
the accounting and operating structures of enterprises, it is possible that producing
units with differing levels of homogeneity with respect to activities and geographical
precision will be found and that they may be suitable for the compilation of data on
selected variables, such as number of persons employed; they may even be suitable for
the compilation of production statistics if all the information needed with respect to
meaningful operating profit is available.