Industrial Pattern Research Articles

Inter-organisational innovation processes in the European food and drink industry

Although the food and drink (F&D) industry is Europe's largest manufacturing sector, few studies have explored its innovation activities so far. Starting from the widespread assumption that F&D manufacturers are supplier dominated 'a la Pavitt', we formulated hypotheses about their innovation activities. These were tested through Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests on data drawn from a sample of 54,088 manufacturing firms (7,301 of which operating in the F&D industry) in 14 European countries, participating in Eurostat's 2008 Community Innovation Survey. The results confirm the supplier dominated nature of F&D firms, although also show that some largely anecdotal assumptions about the F&D industry's pattern of innovation cannot be empirically supported.

“Flying geese” in China: The textile and apparel industry's pattern of migration

China has large regional variations in both factor endowments and levels of economic development. In principle, some industrial enterprises will relocate to the inland regions from the coastal regions to take advantage of lower wage rates and land prices, provided that the regions are different enough. However, few studies have empirically tested whether this kind of “flying geese” pattern of domestic industrial relocation has occurred on the ground or not. Using data from the textile and apparel industry from 1998 to 2011, this paper shows the existence of the “flying geese” pattern of industrial relocation. Data show that before around 2005, the textile and apparel industry was clustered in the eastern region of China, but it has since shifted toward the central and western regions.

The dynamics of innovation in Malaysia's wooden furniture industry: Innovation actors and linkages

As a low-tech, labour intensive and supplier-dominated industry, the wooden furniture industry's pattern of innovation is widely acknowledged as business driven. This paper's main objective is to ascertain the roles played by the various innovation actors and their linkages to the process of technological innovations in the wooden furniture industry. Empirical evidence is derived from a narrative case study of the Muar furniture cluster in Malaysia. The main findings from this study indicate that the dynamics of innovation in Malaysia's wooden furniture industry are mainly business-led and are characterised as collective innovation. In this regard, the roles played by the immediate business environment such as suppliers, customers, competitors, and retailers are of paramount importance. These innovation actors have been linked closely to firms in their surge for technological advancement. Universities and government organisations do not feature in the operations of these firms.

Coordinated market economy/liberal employment relations: low cost competition in the German aviation industry

This paper examines the German low cost airline industry by analysing how the growth of low cost competition has influenced the industry's pattern of employment relations. The paper highlights the role of Lufthansa, as both the traditional flag carrier and the leading site of employment relations within the German aviation sector. The paper explains how Lufthansa has positioned itself to face low cost competition by, among other initiatives, creating its own low cost subsidiary (Germanwings). Competitive pressures, stemming from the liberalization of European aviation and demand for low cost travel, have produced a marked divergence in this industry from the typical pattern of German employment relations. The paper explains this divergence by situating the case study within the varieties of capitalism literature.

An Industrial Geography of Cocaine (review)

Reviewed by: An Industrial Geography of Cocaine Soren C. Larsen An Industrial Geography of Cocaine Christian M. Allen . Routledge, New York, 2005. 150 pp., photographs, maps. $75.00 hardback (ISBN 0-415-94940-8) In An Industrial Geography of Cocaine, Christian M. Allen synthesizes the literature on cocaine production, trafficking, and distribution to generate a model of the industry and its firms, thereby offering insight into the connections between drugprohibition policies and trends towards economic liberalization in the western hemisphere. The book begins by situating the research within theories of location, competitive advantage, and corporate strategy and by outlining the analytical perspective of qualitative research that underpins the study. Allen uses published data from sources such as the National Drug Intelligence Center, the United States Department of State, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and The Economist as well as information gleaned from open-ended interviews with drug enforcement officials. The second chapter uses the framework of competitive advantage to identify the factors that contribute to success in the industry and to discuss the evolution of the business from a vertically integrated form in the 1980s to its current manifestation as a flexible network. The chapter also examines the industry's patterns of innovation and its unique price structure. The heart of the book is contained within the next four chapters, which provide an exhaustive description of the industry that moves the reader through the production cycle of cocaine. Embedded within this narrative is a series of case studies that focus on the competitive advantages offered by four key locations in the value-added chain: Bolivia, Columbia, Mexico, and the United States. Chapter 3 explores the initial processing of coca first into a paste and then into a cocaine base. It highlights the weight-losing nature of the manufacturing process, which tends to encourage processing facilities to locate close to the coca fields. It also underscores how the ongoing threat of drug seizures contributes to diseconomies of scale that have encouraged the construction of small, difficult-to-identify processing facilities. Chapter 4 explores the competitive advantage Columbia enjoys in refining the base into cocaine and trafficking the drug to markets in the United States and Europe. Particularly helpful in this chapter is the analysis of the country's historical legacy of smuggling, which has generated a culture of contraband acceptance as well as extensive technical expertise in the [End Page 334] business. The next chapter examines Mexico's emerging role in the distribution of the drug to wholesalers in the United States as entrepreneurs have increasingly taken advantage of the 1990s liberalization of cross-border trade. Chapter 6 draws upon insights from central place theory to identify a hierarchy of distribution centers in the United States, eventually focusing on a micro-scale analysis of cocaine distribution at the neighborhood level. The final two chapters examine the policy implications and scholarly relevance of the study, with a focus on how legalization of the drug would affect the industry's price structure, operation procedures, and multinational imprint. The value of Allen's book lies in its integration and synthesis of the extant published material into a coherent, transnational model of the cocaine industry. This exercise enables the author to identify and expand upon several useful insights that no doubt will be of interest to economic geographers. Among the most significant of these are that economic liberalization has tended to increase drug trafficking, which takes advantage of concealment in licit trade; supply-side enforcement and eradication programs appear to have had no measurable or lasting impact on cocaine prices or consumption levels in the United States; and enforcement and eradication programs designed along these lines have stimulated innovation and competitive responses among the industry's firms, ultimately strengthening their ability to manufacture and distribute the drug. It is in this context that the author explores the viability of legalizing cocaine, although he admits that the model cannot predict how this course of action would impact consumption levels in the United States. The book would be particularly useful in an introductory course in economic or industrial geography because it offers a coherent portrait of a product's life cycle that features classic and contemporary concepts in...

Theoretical foundations or considerations regarding the growth of tourism enterprises

The paper attempts to answer the question as to the determinants of the typical size configuration of firms in Central Europe's hospitality industry. In discussing the historically fragmented character of hospitality and tourism and the associated conduct and performance characters of this industry, the paper presents different possible growth scenarios and/or possibilities for the hotel accommodation sector including internationalisation. In the concluding section of the paper the consequences of the twin forces ofglobalisation and heightened competition and a quickened pace of technological change are analyzed with respect to the industry's pattern of growth and development.

"Economic Policy and Industrial Growth in Pakistan"—A Review (Review Article)

Stephen R. Lewis (Jr.) is one of the few foreign economists most compe¬tent to write on Pakistan economy judged on the basis of his past publications, length of association with this country and sincerity of commitment to under¬stand it. Therefore, the volume under review [10], coming from the pen of such a knowledgeable person, cannot but be seriously taken by all students of the Pakistan economy. The general purpose of the work has been to explore the causes of rapid industrialization in Pakistan, to analyse the process of industrial growth and to assess the relative importance of policy variables and nonpolicy determinants in explaining the pattern and speed of industrialization. Lewis extensively draws upon the previous studies on Pakistan economy relating to the structure of tariffs and commodity taxes, the growth and structural changes in manufacturing industries, the intersectoral terms of trade between agriculture and manufacture and the effective rates of protection to industries (many of which were done either by him or with his inspiration or collaboration), so much so that the book looks like a lengthy digest of these studies carried out in the past. However, he marshals the empirical findings of these works to deduce some new conclusions.

Comments on "Planning Experience in Pakistan"

Pakistan's industrial achievement in a relatively short span of time and in the light of the experience of the similarly placed countries has been favourably commented upon by the observers and analysts, both at home and abroad. Dr. M. N. Huda, in his Conference Address, refers to this impressive record of Pakistan's progress in the course of which many industries have grown from the state of infancy and that of teething troubles to a state of viability and adult¬hood [2, Pp. 10-11]. Indeed, the rapid growth of the manufactured exports from Pakistan in recent years may be considered as an indication of the extent to which the industrial progress in Pakistan has been successful. For the future, he rightly advocates an aggressive but selective industrialization based on both the home and export markets. Moreover, his observations do em¬phasize the need for increasing the productivity of the existing industries as well as for a careful application of the criterion of efficiency in the selection of the future pattern of industrialization. This note seeks to indicate the inter¬relationship between the industrial efficiency and the export performance; it draws attention to a few neglected aspects of the recent studies on indust¬rial efficiency in Pakistan such as the intra-firm differences in efficiency. It explores the rationale and the implications of 'infant-industry" protection for industrialization in Pakistan.