As the millennium turns for science and technology

Abstract

During the 1980's, the plastic-processing industry in developed countries has had to shift to knowledge-intensive production in order to remain competitive. To accomplish this, the industry was forced to reorganize in order to ensure the existence of a technological infrastructure that would permit such production to take place. In this paper a comparative study was made of this shift in New York State (U.S.), England and Israel. The main findings are: (1) most processors are small firms that cannot provide all technological services, such as research and marketing, in-house; consequently, they depend on external services. (2) The formation of adequete services may be inhibited by failure of market forces, compelling firms to cooperate to assure their development. (3) Cooperation is feasible only if firms understand that, in the new production approach, industrial activity takes place in a network composed of processors, research and development centers, materials suppliers, trade companies, and end-users. (4) In New York State, such awareness developed during the 1980s and contributed to the expansion of technological infrastructure and the upgrading of firms. (5) In England, technological services developed partly with government assistance, but most processors, lacking awareness of the developments, made few restructuring efforts. The only exceptions were those serving sophisticated end-users, such as the defense and automative industries. (6) Israeli industry failed to create adequate services until 1991. However, many kibbutz factories, with their highly educated labor force, successfully developed their own services, even though this often caused wasteful redundancy of efforts.The principal conclusion is that policies meant to stimulate restructurng should focus above all on creating awareness of developments in the industry and ensuring an educated labor force. Moreover, inter-firm cooperation should be stimulated to ensure development of technological services and industrial networking.