Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial PracticeRecent years have seen a lively debate over the role of tacit knowledge and interactive learning in privileging the local over the global. Yet, our continuing inability to answer questions such as 'when and why is the local important in production and innovation processes?' indicates that our understanding of the firm and the forces that shape its managers' choices remains weak. Such a theory ought to be able to answer fundamental questions like: why do firms in particular places adopt particular production and innovation practices, and not others? What forces determine what a firm 'knows' and when it is able to act upon this knowledge? How easy is it to transfer this knowledge between places? This book presents a new conception of industrial practice and firm behaviour. It explains how the cultures that shape the practices of firms and the trajectories of regional and national economies are actually produced. The analysis shows how the internal and inter-firm organization of production, use of technologies, and the industrial knowledge underpinning these practices are strongly influenced by their social and institutional context. Routine forms of behaviour are not simply inherited from past practice. Instead, they are shaped and constrained - though not wholly determined - by a set of institutions that govern how work is organized, workers are deployed, and technology is implemented. Because of the slowly evolving nature of these institutions, distinctive national 'models' are not converging around a single global norm. |
Contents
Capital Technology and Economic Performance | 18 |
Proximity Organization and Culture | 46 |
Regional Cultures of Production | 75 |
The Roots of Germanys | 103 |
Tacit Knowledge in Geographical Context | 132 |
Geography Learning and Convergence | 157 |
178 | |
195 | |
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actor-network theory adoption advanced machinery advanced manufacturing technologies analysis approach argue arguments arising Baden-Württemberg Canada Canadian capital cent chapter close communities of practice competitive complex concept considerably context convergence corporate costs cultural difficulties distance distinctive economic geography effective equipment Erik Swyngedouw firm's foreign-owned framework Furthermore German firms German machinery German MMT German producers Gertler global Hence ibid idea implementation important industrial practices innovation installation inter-firm interviews investment Japanese labour market literature located Lundvall machine producers machine tools machinery producers market geography MMT producers nation-state Neckar-Alb North American users North Rhine-Westphalia Ontario operation organization organizational overseas problems process technologies producers and users producers of advanced production systems question relationship role sector shape shared significant Silicon Valley social spatial Storper strategy success suppliers tacit knowledge technical tion understanding user plant user-producer interaction user's users and producers workers workplace
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