Institutions, Agency, and Industrial Practices

Abstract

Why are firms in some regions or nations so successful at adopting particular new production technologies and work practices while those in other places are not? What role do culturally defined characteristics, traits, and attitudes play in determining the degree of success in this process? Moreover, to what extent can such successful practices be replicated or ‘manufactured’ in other less fortunate locations? These questions figure prominently in a number of important debates, both theoretical and practical, and constitute the central issues of concern for this book. Scholars interested in the theory of regional and national economic development have, at least since the mid-1980s, engaged in a lively debate over the nature of change in the contemporary economy, and the forces producing such change. Considerable attention has been focused on the set of new production and innovation practices that many see as the foundation of firms’ competitive success in a period described variously as the era of post-Fordism. after-Fordism, ‘new competition’, ‘new social economy’, ‘knowledge-based economy’, or ‘learning economy’. These practices include the use of highly flexible, advanced manufacturing technologies, the reorganization of work inside the firm to enhance innovative capacity, improve quality, and increase responsiveness to changing market demands, and the restructuring of external relations—with customers, suppliers, and competitors—as firms supplement arm’s-length, market-based transactions with closer co-operation and collaboration to improve their responsiveness and innovative capability. The international literature in economic geography, industrial economics, economic sociology, political science, and management studies is now replete with case studies of individual countries and regions where firms have developed and employed such practices to great effect, enabling them to increase sales at home and abroad, and to maintain or expand their workforces. The most celebrated cases include Germany’s Baden-Wurttemberg, the Third Italy (especially the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany), Silicon Valley, and Japan’s Tokyo-Osaka corridor. In this multidisciplinary literature, interest has converged around a common theme: the role of culture in shaping the internal and external practices of firms.