No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Understanding Remigration and Innovation – An Appeal for a Cultural Economic Geography
Abstract
The acquisition of new knowledge is a crucial capital of highly skilled remigrants and its utilisation in home countries can play a major role for regional economic development. By reviewing the remigration literature it is shown that remigrants are able to create innovation in their home countries and promote regional development. But also theoretical deficits can be identified regarding the structural conditions of transferring new knowledge across regions which precedes potential innovation processes. Recent theoretical ideas cannot sufficiently explain why remigrants become innovative to varying degrees depending on their home regions. A cultural approach of economic geography is needed to highlight the cultural construction of the economy. It allows for remigrants to be perceived as knowledge brokers, which crucially influences the returnee’s capacity to innovate.
... In recent years, by adding the variable of ecosystems as a factor-mechanism for linking businesses with regional economies, there has been considerable research interest in the role of culture in the economic vitality and dynamics of innovation of regional economies (Klaerding 2009). Cultural, structural and social factors are highlighted previously in the literature on industrial districts as important assets for regional economic development (Asheim 2000;Amin 1999) and on innovative milieux (Kebir and Crevoisier 2007;Crevoisier 2004). ...
The primary aim of this paper is to identify key similarities and differences in the conceptualization of culture across the major theories of regional socioeconomic science, including economic, business, administrative, social, cultural and political dimensions acting at the regional and local scales. The second goal is to present an overview of the knowledge base and third to cohesively examine and partially recreate the topic using the semi-systematic review method. The final objective of examining the aforementioned issues is to clarify the dynamic correlation in the structuring of business and innovation culture, as well as to identify the characteristics that contribute to the sustainable culture of business and regional innovation systems, including long-term sustainable development. The research shows that the coexistence and combination of innovative culture at the business and regional levels should be perceived as a dynamic and co-evolutionary process involving a variety of factors. Local organizations and institutes that foster entrepreneurship are among the elements that enhance the innovation culture; however, having all of the resources in isolation is insufficient for an efficient ecosystem. This study proposes the establishment of a framework that will enhance the growth of innovation, cultural evolution and regional ecosystem performance. The Institutes of Local Development and Innovation (ILDI) are a policy idea that might give effective micro–meso-level solutions for the region. These policy proposals will diagnose the regional business culture under the prism of strategy, technology, and management levels. The specific investigation attempted in this paper demonstrates that several converging fruitful paths have already been created in the relative international literature. These paths could be combined and deepened further by studying the close evolutionary interconnection between business and regional innovation culture as it emerges at a global scale in the present.
... This way, cultural proximity provides stronger arguments than spatial (regional) proximity per se (see BOSCHMA, 2005), for analyzing and influencing learning in space. In line with a relational perspective, the region then increasingly has to be treated as a level of analysis or spatial cutout of a broader cultural landscape created and reproduced by the interplay between various cultures (see also KLAERDING, 2009KLAERDING, , 2011. That is why we suggest speaking of learning in space rather than learning regions. ...
HASSINK R. and KLAERDING C. The end of the learning region as we knew it; towards learning in space, Regional Studies. Since its launch in the mid-1990s, the learning region has been much debated by academics and applied in regional policies, which are as such positive signs. However, the concept has also been criticized for its fuzziness and its spatial (or regional) fetishism. By applying a cultural and relational perspective, the paper postulates a shift from the learning region concept that studies regions as places of learning to a new analytical framework, learning in space, which studies culture-influenced learning processes in relations or networks of people and organizations.
... It is expected that regional culture will enable and enhance open innovation, when it is conducive to stimulating global linkages between companies from the region and innovation partners elsewhere, and in attracting global talent to the region. In turn, immigrants and remigrants can act as knowledge brokers to overcome culture-based problems of knowledge transfer (Klaerding, 2009), which will facilitate a more open regional innovation culture. As a consequence, an environment characterized by high "quality of place" (Florida, 2000(Florida, , 2005 able to attract knowledge workers from elsewhere such as attractive living conditions and city life, cultural activities, presence of creative people and tolerance, and a regional image of "openness" is favourable also for open innovation. ...
The concept of open innovation, building upon ideas of “interactive innovation” and “innovation networking” has gained interest more recently. It argues that companies should increasingly also rely on ideas and knowledge developed externally, and create external paths for innovation. There are various mechanisms used by companies for acquiring external knowledge such as R&D and innovation collaboration with other firms and universities, relations to spin-off companies, and informal knowledge interactions within local milieux and “open innovation campuses”. Open innovation and networking are no general phenomena but depend on certain company and regional characteristics such as the respective innovation culture. The interrelationship between open innovation and regional culture has been explored by studies on regional advantage emphasizing socio-cultural aspects of opening up innovation, the literature on regional clusters, emphasizing knowledge sharing in networks, and the contributions to regional innovation systems, emphasizing the role of the institutional environment. We investigate examples of open innovation for different regions of Europe including high-tech and low-tech industries: The Southeast region of The Netherlands (high-tech systems centred on Philips and performance materials centred on DSM), Basel (Life Science industry focused on Novartis and other firms) and Styria (metal industry). We analyse the ways and mechanisms at work for open innovation, and the way these are related to regional culture. We find that open innovation strategies of companies benefit from certain regional culture characteristics and that there is no uniform “model of open innovation that applies to all types of regions”. Region-specific solutions and policies are required that account for divergent regional conditions. The research shows that we rarely find the ideal model of “uncontrolled” open innovation, but rather different forms of innovation practices that are somewhere in between the open and the closed model. Both corporate cultures and regional cultures in the regions studied still show many aspects hampering open innovation, underlining that change towards a culture facilitating open innovation takes considerable time.
This study investigates the patterns in regional culture that enable and enhance open innovation and drive the transformation towards an open innovation culture. Based on the existing literature on open innovation in regions, a framework of innovation dilemmas is developed to assess how regions can address seemingly conflicting demands and find a dynamic balance that is appropriate for the regional context in order to develop an open innovation culture. The framework is applied to three regions in The Netherlands, representing different types of geographically centred open innovation networks, where empirical research has been conducted of the interaction in open innovation processes between firms, knowledge institutes, regional governments and innovation support agencies. The research shows that different regional contexts result in different requirements for cultures conducive to open innovation. It is concluded that the framework of innovation culture dilemmas can serve as an analytical tool to identify elements in the regional culture conducive to open innovation and/or hampering open innovation, and can be used by regional actors in the innovation system to identify necessary measures to support open innovation.
Conceptualizing Mobile LaborElite Labor MarketsTemporary Migrant Labor: Accumulation by DisenfranchisementImmigrant Labor Markets: Racialization and EmploymentGendered Geographies of Everyday Labor MobilityConclusion
References
Alice Lam is Professor of Organisation Studies at the School of Management, Royal
Holloway University of London. Her research focuses on the relationship between organizational
forms, knowledge creation and societal institutions. Her current work examines the
changing nature of academic scientific work and knowledge transfer between university
and industry.
Culture is widely recognised as an important factor explaining innovative performance both at the level of individual organisations and at the level of regions. Such explanations run the danger of ending up with a rather static definition of culture. This paper presents a dilemma approach of innovation culture that acknowledges the complexity, dynamics and tensions between contradictory elements of culture. Six dilemmas of innovation culture are distinguished. Interaction between the ways in which regions and companies deal with these dilemmas will influence innovative performance at both levels. The approach is applied in an analysis of the region Southeast Netherlands. The findings emphasise the need to establish a dynamic balance in the different dilemmas of culture. Intermediary organisations can play an important role in bringing companies and regions together in this balancing act. Openness to outside influences (disturbing whatever balance has been reached), appears crucial to maintain innovative performance over time.
As societies internationalize, the demand for, and the value of, various goods and services increase. Individuals who possess new ideas, technologies and information that abets globalization become imbued with making them more valuable to these societies. This report looks at this issue from five perspectives. First, it shows that China's education and employment system is now highly internationalized. Secondly, since even Chinese scholars sent by the government rely heavily on foreign funds to complete their studies, China is benefiting from foreign capital invested in the cohort of returnees. Thirdly, the report shows that foreign PhDs are worth more than domestic PhDs in terms of people's perceptions, technology transfer and in their ability to bring benefits to their universities. Finally, returnees in high tech zones, compared to people in the zones who had not been overseas, were more likely to be importing technology and capital, to feel that their skills were in great demand within society, and to be using that technology to target the domestic market.
James A. (2005) Demystifying the role of culture in innovative regional economies, Regional Studies 39 , 1197–1216. Within the regional learning and innovation literature, the precise impact of regional ‘culture' on firms' competitive performance remains unspecified. In response, this paper draws on research on Utah's high-tech industrial agglomeration, embedded in a highly visible regional culture: Mormonism. Focusing specifically on computer software firms, the paper first shows how the cultural embeddedness of firms in the region is best understood as a series of sustained tensions between: (1) self-identified regional cultural traits imported into the firm; versus (2) key elements of corporate cultures known to underpin innovation. Second, the paper measures the material impact of that regional cultural embedding on firms' innovative capacities and hence abilities to compete. Finally, it outlines the wider relevance of the author's work with regard to the spatial limits imposed on high-tech cluster policy by cultural context.
In recent years, economic geographers have drawn extensively upon notions of 'cultural embeddedness' to explore how spatially vari- able sets of cultural conventions, norms, values and beliefs shape Wrms' innovative performance in dynamic regional economies. However, our understanding of these causal links remains partial, reinforced by an 'over-territorialised' conception of cultural embeddedness which sidelines the role of institutional actors operating outside and across the boundaries of 'the local'. So motivated, this paper oVers a theo- retically-informed - and theoretically informing - empirical analysis of the high tech regional economy in Salt Lake City, Utah to explore the everyday causal mechanisms, practices and processes - both local and extra-local - through which Wrms' cultural embedding within the region is manifested, performed and (un)intentionally (re)produced. In so doing, this paper aims to further our understanding of the constitutive entanglement and complex interweaving of cultural/economic practices, and to contribute to the development of an in-depth empirical corpus of work which compliments the exciting conceptual developments that have largely dominated cultural economic geog- raphy over the last decade.
There are changing but increasingly important ways in which international migration contributes to knowledge creation and transfer. The paper focuses on four main issues. First, the different ways in which knowledge is conceptualized, and the significance of corporeal mobility in effecting knowledge creation and transfer in relation to each of these types. Second, the significance of international migration in knowledge creation and transfer, and how this is mediated by whether migration is constituted within bounded (by company structures) or boundaryless careers, and as free agent labour migration. Third, the situating of migrants within firms, and the particular obstacles to their engagement in co-learning and knowledge translation: especially positionality, intercultural communication and social identities. Fourth, a focus on the importance of place, which is explored through theories of learning regions and creativity, and notions of the transferability of social learning across different public and private spheres. The need to view migrant learning and knowledge creation/transfer as widely dispersed, rather than as elite practices in privileged regions, is a recurrent theme.
The concept of embeddedness has gained much prominence in economic geography over the last decade, as much work has been done on the social and organizational foundations of economic activities and regional development. Unlike the original conceptualizations, however, embeddedness is mostly conceived of as a ‘spatial’ concept related to the local and regional levels of analysis. By revisiting the early literature on embeddedness in particular the seminal work of Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter and critically engaging with what I will call an ‘overterritorialized’ concept, a different view on the fundamental categories of embeddedness is proposed. This reconceptualization then is illustrated using the poststructuralist metaphor of a rhizome to interpret the notion of embeddedness and its applicability to different geographical scales.
The dramatic contrasts in opinion about the effects of international scientific migration are traced to its intrinsic character as a polymorphic, recurrent phenomenon whose costs and benefits have never been successfully evaluated. The tendency to assign countries the status of “winner” or “loser” in migration patterns is shown to be of dubious usefulness in an era of changing economic paradigms and increased interconnection of scientists via electronic communication networks. Nevertheless, those countries with neither improving economies nor easy and inexpensive network connections may still find themselves at a disadvantage in the global flow of scientific talent.
Highly-skilled professionals, who circulate within and between transnational corporations as inter-company transferees (ICTs), are important constituents of the global economic system. In Castells' 'Network Society', such labour is referred to as 'managerial elites', but what remains invisible in this meta-narrative is their transnational existence. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to unpack further our understanding of transnational managerial elites by drawing upon a study of British highly-skilled ICTs who were posted from London to New York in the late 1990s. The paper is divided into four parts. Following a discussion of transnational managerial elites in globalisation, the paper highlights the transnational organisational and social networks of these ICTs in New York. The paper then revisits the conceptualisation of transnational managerial elites, suggesting that individual career paths, physical mobility and cross-border connections, ties and business/social networks (both physical and virtual) are key factors which reproduce traits of 'transnationalism' in the city. The paper concludes that major constituents of the transnationalism of managerial elites are the organisational and social networks that stretch across national boundaries, grounded in the translocal of the city.
The Saxenian theory of brain circulation analyzes the two-way flow of transnational technical communities instead of the one-way flow portrayed in the brain drain theory. The brain-circulation theory is based on the experience of highly skilled labourers who travel frequently between the Silicon Valley and Hsinchu (Taiwan), leading to industrial upgrading in both locations. This article argues that the brain circulation theory cannot be applied to Zhongguancun (ZGC), a new high-tech region in Beijing, because ZGC is not compatible with the often neglected hypotheses in the brain-circulation theory, i.e., (i) a decentralized industrial structure with specialized producer networks; (ii) a trust-based inter-firm network that induces learning; (iii) a critical financial infrastructure for high-tech startups; and (iv) the role of the state in facilitating technology transfer. Then, what roles do the transnational technical community (Chinese returnees) play in ZGC? My findings suggest that unlike the Silicon Valley and Hsinchu cases, the knowledge assets (e.g., venture capital and research) in ZGC are mostly institutionalized and remain in the hands of the Chinese state. Thus, brain circulation can only apply to a limited number of experienced Chinese returnees who have the political skills to tap into institutionalized assets in ZGC. Nonetheless, the majority of the Chinese returnees continue to have a positive impact on the technological development of ZGC (different from the Hsinchu experience) by creating informal and indirect links between firms and public research institutions.
Using data from 88 samples from 40 countries, the authors reevaluate the propositions of a recent values theory and provide criteria for identifying what is culture-specific in value meanings and structure. They confirm the widespread presence of 10 value types, arrayed on a motivational continuum, and organized on virtually universal, orthogonal dimensions: Openness to Change versus Conservation and Self-Transcendence versus Self-Enhancement. Forty-four values demonstrate high cross-cultural consistency of meaning. In the average sample, about 16% of single values diverge from their proto-typical value types, and one pair of motivationally close value types is intermixed. Test-retest and randomly split sample analyses reveal that some two thirds of deviations represent unreliable measurement and one third represent culture-specific characteristics. Ways to identify and interpret the latter are presented.
The issue of whether or not return migration produces any development impacts on the migrants' country of origin continues to raise the interest of policy-makers. Most empirical studies focus on the macro-level economic impacts of return. However, it has increasingly become apparent that socio-cultural and political impacts are important as well. Using both quantitative and qualitative data concerning highly-skilled élite migrants who have returned to Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, and stressing instead the meso-level of analysis, this paper demonstrates that return migration has, on balance, fostered positive development effects in both the public and private sector. The effects do vary, mostly across generations of migrants and in relation to historical periods. Whereas earlier migrants' contributions tended to concern the realm of nation-building, more recent contributions are to be found in a more explicit economic context in the form of entrepreneurship. In particular, the paper illustrates the changes that return migrants have operated in the workplace and dwells upon some significant, concrete examples of innovative practice and productive investment. The policy implications of the main findings are discussed, and some recommendations for future research are formulated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In this paper, we argue that the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities. We label this capability a firm's absorptive capacity and suggest that it is largely a function of the firm's level of prior related knowledge. The discussion focuses first on the cognitive basis for an individual's absorptive capacity including, in particular, prior related knowledge and diversity of background. We then characterize the factors that influence absorptive capacity at the organizational level, how an organization's absorptive capacity differs from that of its individual members, and the role of diversity of expertise within an organization. We argue that the development of absorptive capacity, and, in turn, innovative performance are history- or path-dependent and argue how lack of investment in an area of expertise early on may foreclose the future development of a technical capability in that area. We formulate a model of firm investment in research and development (R&D), in which R&D contributes to a firm's absorptive capacity, and test predictions relating a firm's investment in R&D to the knowledge underlying technical change within an industry. Discussion focuses on the implications of absorptive capacity for the analysis of other related innovative activities, including basic research, the adoption and diffusion of innovations, and decisions to participate in cooperative R&D ventures.
Higher rates of economic growth in recent years have led Ireland from being a country characterised by emigration to one where population inflows have become an important issue. This paper contains an analysis of one element of the current inflow. Drawing on data collected in 1998 on over 800 Irish individuals who had graduated from Irish colleges in 1992, we compare the wages of returned migrants with the wages of those who stayed in Ireland. In a recent paper, it has been argued that returned migrants accumulate skills and competencies while away that are rewarded on return to the home country. We find support for this argument for men. On average, returning males earn 10 percent more than men who stayed in Ireland, controlling for a range of factors. However, men who say that they originally migrated for labour-related reasons earn 15 percent more. No wage premium is found for female returning migrants relative to female stayers.
Applying the new economics of organization and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross‐national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies. Building on a distinction between ‘liberal market economies’ and ‘coordinated market economies’, it explores the impact of these variations on economic performance and many spheres of policy‐making, including macroeconomic policy, social policy, vocational training, legal decision‐making, and international economic negotiations. The volume examines the institutional complementarities across spheres of the political economy, including labour markets, markets for corporate finance, the system of skill formation, and inter‐firm collaboration on research and development that reinforce national equilibria and give rise to comparative institutional advantages, notably in the sphere of innovation where LMEs are better placed to sponsor radical innovation and CMEs to sponsor incremental innovation. By linking managerial strategy to national institutions, the volume builds a firm‐centred comparative political economy that can be used to assess the response of firms and governments to the pressures associated with globalization. Its new perspectives on the welfare state emphasize the role of business interests and of economic systems built on general or specific skills in the development of social policy. It explores the relationship between national legal systems, as well as systems of standards setting, and the political economy. The analysis has many implications for economic policy‐making, at national and international levels, in the global age.
Applying the new economics of organization and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross‐national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies. Building on a distinction between ‘liberal market economies’ and ‘coordinated market economies’, it explores the impact of these variations on economic performance and many spheres of policy‐making, including macroeconomic policy, social policy, vocational training, legal decision‐making, and international economic negotiations. The volume examines the institutional complementarities across spheres of the political economy, including labour markets, markets for corporate finance, the system of skill formation, and inter‐firm collaboration on research and development that reinforce national equilibria and give rise to comparative institutional advantages, notably in the sphere of innovation where LMEs are better placed to sponsor radical innovation and CMEs to sponsor incremental innovation. By linking managerial strategy to national institutions, the volume builds a firm‐centred comparative political economy that can be used to assess the response of firms and governments to the pressures associated with globalization. Its new perspectives on the welfare state emphasize the role of business interests and of economic systems built on general or specific skills in the development of social policy. It explores the relationship between national legal systems, as well as systems of standards setting, and the political economy. The analysis has many implications for economic policy‐making, at national and international levels, in the global age.
This article proposes a holistic theory of knowledge and adult learning. The theory posits that knowledge consists of three indivisible facets—explicit, implicit, and emancipatory knowledge, and that each of the knowledge facets consists of three layers—foundation, manifestation, and orientation. The holistic theory calls for a dialectical perspective about the dynamic relationships among the three facets to better understand learning. Three contemporary paradigms of knowledge and learning are examined under the perspective of the holistic theory.
This essay critically evaluates the debate in human geography and cognate fields about economy-culture relationships. It takes issue with the terms of the debate, wherein different authors have sought to ground their claims about economy and culture with reference to supposed ‘ontological realities’. Building on the arguments of Don Mitchell (1995; 2000), I argue that economy and culture should be seen as two powerful ideas that help to create the realities they seem only to describe. Economy and culture cannot, I argue, be uncritically invoked by academic analysts as either objects of analysis or explanatory resources. Rather, we need to inquire into how the ideas of economy and culture are semantically ‘fixed’ and with reference to what ‘real-world’ phenomena. Taking the case of indigenous peoples' deployment of the idea of ‘cultural property’, I illustrate the kind of research agenda that follows from seeing ‘economy’ and ‘culture’ as two performative signifiers. I also challenge those involved in the economy-culture debate to take seriously their own role in sustaining, altering or eclipsing the various meanings and referents of these two powerful key words.
There is current interest in the competitive advantage that knowledge may provide for organizations and in the significance of knowledge workers, organizational competencies and knowledge-intensive firms. Yet the concept of knowledge is complex and its relevance to organization theory has been insufficiently developed. The paper offers a review and critique of current approaches, and outlines an alternative. First, common images of knowledge in the organizational Literature as embodied, embedded, embrained, encultured and encoded are identified and, to summarize popular writings on knowledge work, a typology of organizations and knowledge types is constructed. However, traditional assumptions about knowledge, upon which most current speculation about organizational knowledge is based, offer a compartmentalized and static approach to the subject. Drawing from recent studies of the impact of new technologies and from debates in philosophy, linguistics, social theory and cognitive science, the second part of the paper introduces an alternative. Knowledge (or, more appropriately, knowing) is analyzed as an active process that is mediated, situated, provisional, pragmatic and contested. Rather than documenting the types of knowledge that capitalism currently demands the approach suggests that attention should be focused on the (culturally located) systems through which people achieve their knowing, on the changes that are occurring within such systems, and on the processes through which new knowledge may be generated.
As global interconnections have increased in our current era, many social scientists are placing added emphasis on immigration studies and rethinking migration processes. This paper offers a preliminary response to the call for more empirical, but theoretically grounded, work on ‘transnationalism’ and ‘transmigration’. It considers the case of indigenous Fijians, a growing but small population of largely undocumented immigrants to the United States. I situate and define Fijians as transmigrants by underscoring the important meso-level links, including migration networks and social capital, which serve to build and maintain relationships between immigrants, their fellow immigrants, and their kin left behind in Fiji. Additionally, while I contend that Fijian transmigrants are contributing to the formation of transnational bridges and constructing multiple, but connected, localities in both Fiji and the US, I argue that because immigrant Fijians have yet to form staunch social and symbolic ties within the US, they have not emerged into transnational communities. The Fijian case, along with other groups of undocumented transmigrants, also raises questions about the nature and definition of transnational social spaces, since there has been little discussion that identifies or legitimises racialised transnational social spaces specifically organised and occupied by undocumented transmigrants. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This introductory paper sets the scene for the special issue on transnational migration, return and development in West Africa. It first briefly describes the research programme that gave rise to the papers presented here. Then it sets out the basic parameters of the debate on the relationship between migration, return and development in the West African context, highlighting the crucial role of remittances and the neglected topic of return migration. Although officially recorded remittance flows are not as high in West Africa as they are in some other parts of the world, nevertheless they are seen as a critical input to the development process. Moreover, much remittance income escapes formal banking channels and so is unrecorded. The relevance of the West African case also rests on the high levels of educated, skilled migration from the region, and the potential that such migrants could have for development if they could be persuaded either to return or to invest in development-related initiatives from abroad. The final section of the paper introduces the papers which make up the theme issue. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Abstract There has been limited research on the role of international migration in the transfer of tacit knowledge, as opposed to skills and capital. In part, this results from lack of engagement between research on migration and that on knowledge and learning, even in debates concerning the relative importance of distanciated versus localized knowledge transfers. However, positioning international migration in relation to the literature on knowledge management opens up new perspectives on its role in the overall transfer of knowledge in the economy. Starting from the premise that all tacit knowledge transactions are socially situated, in this article I set out a multi-level approach to understanding the role of migrants in knowledge exchanges. The national, the urban and the firm constitute key levels in this study, although these are understood as interfolded rather than as discrete sites of analysis.
Compares the organization of regional economies, focusing on Silicon Valley's thriving regional network-based system and Route 128's declining independent firm-based system. The history of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 as centers of innovation in the electronics indistry is traced since the 1970s to show how their network organization contributed to their ability to adapt to international competition. Both regions faced crises in the 1980s, when the minicomputers produced in Route 128 were replaced by personal computers, and Japanese competitors took over Silicon Valley's market for semiconductor memory. However, while corporations in the Route 128 region operated by internalization, using policies of secrecy and company loyalty to guard innovation, Silicon Valley fully utilized horizontal communication and open labor markets in addition to policies of fierce competition among firms. As a result, and despite mounting competition, Silicon Valley generated triple the number of new jobs between 1975 and 1990, and the market value of its firms increased 1 billion for the same time period. From analysis of these regions, it is clear that innovation should be a collective process, most successful when institutional and social boundaries dividing firms are broken down. A thriving regional economy depends not just on the initiative of individual entrepreneurs, but on an embedded network of social, technical, and commercial relationships between firms and external organizations. With increasingly fragmented markets, regional interdependencies rely on consistently renewed formal and informal relationships, as well as public funding for education, research, and training. Local industrial systems built on regional networks tend to be more flexible and technologically dynamic than do hierarchical, independent firm-based systems in which innovation is isolated within the boundaries of corporations. (CJC)
Organizational knowledge is much talked about but little understood. In this paper we set out to conceptualize organizational knowledge and explore its implications for knowledge management. We take on board Polanyi’s insight concerning the personal character of knowledge and fuse it with Wittgenstein’s insight that all knowledge is, in a fundamental way, collective. We do this in order to show, on the one hand, how individuals appropriate knowledge and expand their knowledge repertoires, and, on the other hand, how knowledge, in organized contexts, becomes organizational. Our claim is that knowledge is the individual capability to draw distinctions, within a domain of action, based on an appreciation of context or theory, or both. Organizational knowledge is the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their work, in particular concrete contexts, by enacting sets of generalizations whose application depends on historically evolved collective understandings. Following our theoretical exploration of organizational knowledge, we report the findings of a case study carried out at a call centre in Panafon, in Greece. Finally, we explore the implications of our argument by focusing on the links between knowledge and action on the one hand, and the management of organizational knowledge on the other. We argue that practical mastery needs to be supplemented by a quasi-theoretical understanding of what individuals are doing when they exercise that mastery, and this is what knowledge management should be aiming at. Knowledge management, we suggest, is the dynamic process of turning an unreflective practice into a reflective one by elucidating the rules guiding the activities of the practice, by helping give a particular shape to collective understandings, and by facilitating the emergence of heuristic knowledge.
In the final years of the twentieth century, brain drain, skills shortages and lack of career opportunities have become issues of major concern for policy-makers concerned with R&D in government, academia, and industry. Labour mobility across political borders, especially among highly skilled labour, provides a solution for the aforementioned concerns to some actors, but engenders problems to others. Drawing on various empirical investigations and on previous studies, this paper attempts to provide a mapping of the various types of human resources mobility across national borders. It argues that various groups of highly skilled persons are driven by different push and pull factors. In addition to immigration legislation, other factors, such as taxation, studying abroad, quality of work, openness in communication, business expansion overseas, labour market supply and demand signals, etc. play important role in the choice of highly skilled migrants to relocate overseas.
The return migration of skilled professionals has been suggested as a policy instrument suitable for reversing the large-scale emigration of skilled professionals from African countries. However, there are no empirical studies showing how migrant professionals from Africa are reintegrated into the labor market after they return. This study examines the relationship between educational attainment and the likelihood of employment among native-born African migrants returning home from abroad. The study focuses on the evidence from Uganda since this country has one of the longest histories of skilled migration in Africa. The results show that returning migrants with university degrees and vocational credentials are more likely to be employed than their nonmigrant and immigrant counterparts. However, this employment advantage was not observed among returning migrants with secondary schooling or below. Furthermore, the results show that returning migrants are generally more likely to be employed as district employment rates increase.
The late twentieth century has witnessed the establishment of new forms of capitalism in East Asia as well as new market economies in Eastern Europe. Despite the growth of international investment and capital flows, these distinctive business systems remain different from each other and from those already developed in Europe and the Americas. This continued diversity of capitalism results from, and is reproduced by, significant differences in societal institutions and agencies such as the state, capital and labour markets, and dominant beliefs about trust, loyalty, and authority. This book presents the comparative business systems framework for describing and explaining the major differences in economic organization between market economies in the late twentieth century. This framework identifies the critical variations in coordination and control systems across forms of industrial capitalism, and shows how these are connected to major differences in their institutional contexts. Six major types of business system are identified and linked to different institutional arrangements. Significant differences in post-war East Asian business systems and the ways in which these are changing in the 1990s are analysed within this framework, which is also extended to compare the path-dependent nature of the new capitalisms emerging in Eastern Europe.
Recent 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.
We examine the labor market performance of return migrants using the Hungarian Household Panel Survey. Two distinct selection
issues are considered in the estimation of the earnings equation; we implement a natural method using MLE. The result that
there is a “premium” to work experience abroad for women is robust across the models we considered. For men, the return to
working abroad is not generally significant.
This essay argues that the success of organizations depends on their ability to design themselves as social learning systems and also to participate in broader learning systems such as an industry, a region, or a consortium. It explores the structure of these social learning systems. It proposes a social definition of learning and distinguishes between three `modes of belonging' by which we participate in social learning systems. Then it uses this framework to look at three constitutive elements of these systems: communities of practice, boundary processes among these communities, and identities as shaped by our participation in these systems.