The explosive growth of the Japanese electronics industry continues to be driven by a combination of market forces and the unique characteristics of the Japanese social organization and people. As an industrial phenomenon, the Japanese electronics industry receives considerable attention from researchers in various fields. However, most of their studies focus on either historical analyses intent on discovering the secret of the industry's enormous success, or on the issue of America's competitiveness in the face of challenges from Japanese technology. Moreover, none of these studies can be free of the bias that stems from each researcher's own upbringing and environment. The authors of The Japanese Electronics Industry have pooled their diverse experience and talents to create a balanced, objective study of this complex subject. They illuminate the history and characteristics of the industry, show the current state of the industry, and explore the research, development, and education vital to the future of the industry.

Interfirm Networks in the Japanese Electronics Industry analyses changes in production networks in the Japanese electronics industry. Japan's post-war success in the assembly industries is frequently attributed to innovative approaches to the organization of production: Japanese assemblers have tended to forge intricate networks of long-term interfirm business relationships. Traditionally, these networks have been characterized by hierarchical interfirm relationships resembling a pyramid. Paprzycki argues that as a result of global industry dynamics, such monolithic 'pyramidal' production networks have come under mounting pressure and are giving way to an increasing diversity of network arrangements. A major contributing factor is the growing cost and complexity of technology, which forces even the largest manufacturers to look beyond traditional network boundaries in order to gain access to complementary (technological) assets and capabilities.

Interfirm Networks in the Japanese Electronics Industry analyses changes in production networks in the Japanese electronics industry. Japan's post-war success in the assembly industries is frequently attributed to innovative approaches to the organization of production: Japanese assemblers have tended to forge intricate networks of long-term interfirm business relationships. Traditionally, these networks have been characterized by hierarchical interfirm relationships resembling a pyramid. Paprzycki argues that as a result of global industry dynamics, such monolithic 'pyramidal' production networks have come under mounting pressure and are giving way to an increasing diversity of network arrangements. A major contributing factor is the growing cost and complexity of technology, which forces even the largest manufacturers to look beyond traditional network boundaries in order to gain access to complementary (technological) assets and capabilities.

Are the Japanese faceless clones who march to the drums of big business and MITI, Japan's ministry of international trade and industry? Bob Johnstone demolishes this misleading stereotype by introducing us to a new kind of Japanese worker - a dynamic, iconoclastic, risk-taking entrepreneur.

This book offers an analysis of the dynamics of the global medical device (medtech) industry from the 1960s until the present, using the approaches of business history and industry studies. While most of the publications in the corresponding field have focused on particular countries/regions or actors, this research is unique in its scope. First, it explores the formation and development of medtech business both globally and in the major countries engaged in this industry (the United States, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, France, and China). Second, it tackles a broad range of actors and organizations, from individual entrepreneurs, medical doctors, and engineers to small family firms, start-ups, and large multinationals, as well as universities and research centers. Hence, for the first time, this book both provides a general understanding of the formation and transformation of the medtech industry throughout the world and sheds light on the main features of a fast-growing business in the twenty-first century. This book will be of value to historians, industry professionals, and analysts.

New edition of the classic ethnographic study of Malay women factory workers. In the two decades since its original publication, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline has become a classic in the fields of anthropology, labor, gender and globalization studies. Based on intensive fieldwork, the book captures a moment of profound transformation for rural Muslim women even as their labor helped launch Malaysia’s rise as a tiger economy. Aihwa Ong’s analysis of the disruptions, conflicts, and ambivalences that roiled the lives of working women has inspired later generations of feminist ethnographers in their study of power, resistance, religious upheavals, and subject formation in the industrial periphery. With a critical introduction by anthropologist Carla Freeman, this new edition upholds an exemplary model of anthropological inquiry into cultural modes of resistance to the ideology, discipline, and workings of global capitalism. “This work remains powerful for its refusal to over-simplify the complexities of export industrialization as a model for economic development, and for its demonstration of the intimate dialectics of culture, economy, gender, religion, and class, and the meaningfulness of place amid the swirling forces of global capitalism [It] opened up many of the questions that should continue to inspire our analyses of globalization today. Indeed, these questions are equally compelling for the reader returning to this work after twenty years and for the reader new to this text and to the intriguing and complex puzzles of globalization.” — from the Introduction by Carla Freeman

The perspectives of technologists, economists, and policymakers are brought together in this volume. It includes chapters dealing with approaches to assessment of technology leadership in the United States and Japan, an evaluation of future impacts of eroding U.S. technological preeminence, an analysis of the changing nature of technology-based global competition, and a discussion of policy options for the United States.