Manufacturing Culture

The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-823382-4
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 220 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gertler, Meric S.

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie Wirtschaftsgeographie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Internationaler Handel
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Volkswirtschaften einzelner Länder und Regionen
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1.: Institutions, Agency, and Industrial Practices

- 2.: Capital, Technology, and Economic Performance

- 3.: Proximity, Organization, and Culture

- 4.: Regional Cultures of Production

- 5.: Crisis in Machinery Building: The Roots of Germany's Economic Malaise?

- 6.: Tacit Knowledge in Geographical Context

- 7.: Geography, Learning, and Convergence

- Bibliography

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Appointed to University of Toronto in 1983. Visiting appointments at the University of Oxford, University of California at Los Angeles, University College London, and the University of Wales, Cardiff. Appointed Professor II, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo in 2001.