EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF THE TECHNOLOGY S-CURVE. PART I: COMPONENT TECHNOLOGIES

The technology S-curve is a useful framework describing the substitution of new for old technologies at the industry level. In this paper I use information from the technological history of the disk drive industry to examine the usefulness of the S-curve framework for managers at the firm level in planning for new technology development. Because improvements in over-all disk drive product performance result from the interaction of improved component technologies and new architectural technologies, each of these must be monitored and managed. This paper focuses on component technology S-curves, and a subsequent paper, also published in this issue of the journal, examines architectural technology Scurves. Improvement in individual components followed S-curve patterns, but I show that the flattening of S-curves is a firm-specific, rather than uniform industry phenomenon. Lack of progress in conventional technologies may be the result, rather than the stimulus, of a forecast that the conventional technology is maturing, and some firms demonstrated the ability to wring far greater levels of performance from existing component technologies than other firms. Attacking entrant firms evidenced a distinct disadvantage versus incumbent firms in developing and using new component technologies. Firms pursuing aggressive Scurve switching strategies in component technology development gained no strategic advantage over firms whose strategies focused on extending the life of established component technologies.     

Shifting global supply networks and fast fashion: made in Turkey for Marks & Spencer

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid‐season purchasing to their previous two‐season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had appeared on the retail scene. Since then mid‐season purchasing has evolved into purchasing throughout the year; and the ‘throwaway market’ (now called fast fashion) has become almost the norm. Here we revisit one of those British retailers (Marks & Spencer) together with its Turkish suppliers and observe a trend towards the diffusion of design capabilities to suppliers that is more widespread than is suggested in the literature. We also consider the question of how most appropriately to conceptualize the nature of these retailer‐ supplier relations in today's circumstances. We especially look into the manner in which these relations are reflected in price negotiations, the eventual distribution of the value‐added, and the nature of everyday interactions such as accreditation and reclamation practices. We conclude that even though Turkish suppliers seem to be successfully upgrading into design–a high value‐added activity–the question of whether or not this development has entailed a renegotiation of power between retailer and supplier remains a complicated one.     

Lean Production: Denial, Confirmation or Extension of Sociotechnical Systems Design?

This paper makes a comparison between the basicelements of lean production and sociotechnical systemsdesign (STSD) and compares them both with thecharacteristics of the traditional Fordist system of mass production. It argues that lean productioncan hardly be considered as an alternative to massproduction, as its proponents suggest, but is on thecontrary extending the life of mass production methods. However, lean production does appear to containsome building blocks for the innovative productionsystems that are expected to prevail in the 21stcentury. STSD, which has always presented itself as an alternative and possible successor to Fordistmethods, will need to link its traditional concerns forquality of work and flexibility of work organizationswith the new issues of continuous improvement, learning,and innovation.     

Global networks and the reorganization of production in the clothing industry of post‐socialist Ukraine

In this article we examine how processes of globalization and the nature of emerging inter‐firm relationships influence the organization of production in a post‐socialist region, using the case of the clothing industry in Transcarpathia, Western Ukraine. We combine insights from two perspectives, the global commodity chain approach and the new regionalism. The focus on both institutional setting and interfirm relationships is essential in regions undergoing rapid change. In the article we also use Burt's concept of structural holes and the idea of a competence‐difficulty gap to examine the nature of relationships within networks of firms, arguing that global integration can be viewed as a bridging process. The evidence comes from surveys and fieldwork conducted between 1997 and 2004, providing a longitudinal analysis of the same firms. Among other findings, we show that the difficulty of doing business locally may make relationships more stable. With respect to industrial structure, international subcontracting and joint‐venture arrangements enable technological modernization in assembly and parts of preassembly, but also result in the demise of high‐value added competences.     

A NEW LEARNING APPROACH TO PROCESS IMPROVEMENT IN A TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY

Redesigning and improving business processes to better serve customer needs has become a priority in service industries as they scramble to become more competitive. We describe an approach to process improvement that is being developed collaboratively by applied researchers at US WEST, a major telecommunications company, and the University of Colorado. Motivated by the need to streamline and to add more quantitative power to traditional quality improvement processes, the new approach uses an artificial intelligence (AI) statistical tree growing method using customer survey data to identify operations areas where improvements are expected to affect customers most. This AI/statistical method also identifies realistic quantitative targets for improvement and suggests specific strategies predicted to have high impart. This research, funded in part by the Colorado Advanced Software Institute (CASI) to stimulate profitable innovations, has resulted in a practical methodology used successfully at US WEST to help set process improvement priorities and guide resource allocation decisions throughout the company.     

New Zealand's turbulent waters: the use of forced labour in the fishing industry

In this article, we make an empirical and conceptual contribution to the emerging debate on unfree labour in the context of labour chains and global value chains. We recast an historical view of poor labour practices aboard some foreign charter vessels fishing in New Zealand's waters as something more nefarious. Applying the International Labour Organization (ILO) and European Commission (EC) operational indicators of human trafficking for forced labour to 293 interviews, we evaluate the extent to which we can consider migrant fishing crew aboard South Korean vessels as victims of forced labour. We find that they are indeed victims of forced labour and that there is a need to extend the ILO/EC operational indicators to take into account exit strategies. Specifically, there is insufficient recognition of deception, exploitation and coercion at the point of exit, which can prevent a trafficked victim from exiting the employment relationship. Thus, it is crucial to take account of all stages, from recruitment to exit, to understand fully unfree labour in labour and global value chains.     

Selling or buying American dreams?: Americanization and Australia's interwar advertising industry

Abstract

During the interwar period, the US industrial and financial sectors expanded at a phenomenal rate. Despite the Depression, America had become an economic, industrial, and cultural powerhouse by the beginning of the Second World War. The advertising industry had been both a beneficiary of this growth and, indeed, a key contributor – spreading the American Dream to national and international audiences, including Australia. An important member of this audience was Australia's advertising industry. Like its American counterpart, the local advertising industry was directly involved in the process of Americanization. However, the Australian advertising industry did not simply ape its American counterparts. By examining the discourse of America in interwar Australian advertising literature, this article argues that the Australian advertising industry was interested in American advertising methods and techniques because they had been devised by the most modern advertising industry in the world. For Australian advertising agents, Americanization was simply viewed as a means to an end – to maximize consumption.     

QUALITY,TECHNOLOGY, AND GLOBAL MANUFACTURING

It has been more than a decade since the quality movement was reborn in U.S. industry, and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the results of some of these programs. At the same time, product and service R&D is on the rise. These trends are incorporated here into an extension of the Utterback-Abernathy model to examine the quality, technology, and performance relationship. Six hundred durable goods firms in 20 countries were surveyed and it was found that technology significantly moderated the association of R&D intensity and total quality management (tqm) with market share, controlling for industry category. In high technology firms, R&D intensity was significantly associated with market share; in low technology firms, tqm was significantly associated with market share. R&D intensity and tqm were significantly and inversely related, while R&D intensity and computer-aided manufacturing (cam) were significantly and directly related.     

BEYOND PRACTICES: A QUALITATIVE INQUIRY INTO HIGH PERFORMANCE ELECTRONICS ASSEMBLY

This paper is based on the cumulative or synergies theory of manufacturing performance, as opposed to the trade‐off perspective. The paper compares the cases of two British contract electronics assemblers, the first one having achieved a high level of performance on productivity, quality, and dependability, and the second one having achieved a lower level of performance on these criteria but higher flexibility. The case material is used to develop a “high school” analogy that helps to understand why companies come to achieve cumulative manufacturing performance in an industrial sector where competitive pressure is particularly high.     

SERVICE SYSTEM DESIGN FOR THE PROPERTY AND CASUALTY INSURANCE INDUSTRY

This paper describes the changes that are forcing property and casualty insurance firms to rethink their service system design and in particular their distribution strategies. A set of questions related to distribution that are uppermost in the minds of executives in this industry are presented along with a literature survey of models that can be used to answer some of these questions. Based on the survey, a normative framework for designing the distribution system is proposed. Qualitative and quantitative analysis based on the proposed framework is presented along with empirical data to demonstrate the usefulness of the framework. The paper concludes with an agenda for further research.