Competitiveness by Design: An Institutionalist Perspective on the Resurgence of a 'Mature' Industry in a High Wage Economy.

摘要

This thesis examines the learning dynamics underpinning the resurgence of Canada's office furniture manufacturing sector, which underwent dramatic growth following its near collapse in the wake of the North American trade liberalization beginning in the late 1980s. It investigates the role that design and quality have played in prompting a move up-market and enhancing the sector's competitiveness. It also focuses on other leaning processes that drive economic growth, looking at attempts to transfer workplace practices from Continental Europe to Canada, as well as the institutional obstacles that shape and constrain these processes. Finally, it examines how furniture firms learn from their customers, and the key role played by market intermediaries such as sales agents, dealers, interior designers, and architects in linking producers with consumers as well as influencing the final furniture product.;The learned behaviour hypothesis that is central to this thesis suggests that globally competitive firms operating in a Canadian institutional context prosper by learning how to produce (i.e. industrial practices and processes) and what to produce (i.e. design-intensive, high quality products) from the above sources that are both internal and external to the manufacturing firm. The scope of research considers the social and organizational practices through which manufacturing knowledge is integrated into innovation processes, as well as their dynamics, spatiality and temporality, the institutional forces that shape the skills, training, tenure and design dimensions of a high performance workplace, and the mechanisms and conditions that mediate the transfer of manufacturing knowledge at a distance. The empirical analysis entails a mixed-methods approach including a survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews with industry experts.;The analysis contributes to core debates in economic geography and the social sciences concerning the role of proximity and distance in innovative production, and the structure / agency debate. In summary, it finds that economic growth in the office furniture sector in Canada is dependent upon not only local knowledge networks and flows but also global sources of innovation and competitive advantage. It also advances an agency-centered institutionalist economic geography by showing that institutions interact in complex ways with the decision-making of economic actors to shape local labour dynamics and the behaviour of firms.