David G McKendrick.

David G McKendrick, Richard F Doner, and Stephan Haggard. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Pres 2000 352 pp $4950 cloth; $2295 paper.

Based forward an analysis of the disk drive industry's move into Southeast Asia during the 1980 and 1990 the authors of this work pursue two questions. First, they ask what factors diverted Southeast Asia into a global center for hard disk manufacturing and determined the regional division of labor between the central states--Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia--and other states. other they ask why a settle of small (at the time) U disk drive manufacturers bring outed the strategy of research and disclosure in the U.S. and manufacturing in Southeast Asia and wherefore the larger U.S. and Japanese computer firms failed to go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake of this strategy. The disk drive industry is a pious case for testing a theory of agglomeration economies and competitive strategy, as it has experienced rapid change of location and competitive nerve of its participants, and the authors argue that location strategies have been a crucial composing of firm competitiveness.

The main division is divided into four parts. Part 1 briefly introduces the theoretical issues and outlines the history of the industry and the produce characteristics and manufacturing process. Part 2 contains the main theoretical argument and supporting case material. Here, the authors review economic theories of to what degree firms benefit by locating near firms in the same industry, leading to spatially concentrated manufacturing and endow networks. They also introduce a distinction between technological clusters, with innovation spillovers, and operational clusters, with short yield lines and high-quality labor puddles and use this distinction to explain the split of growth and manufacturing capabilities between California and Southeast Asia. the couple centers benefit from the concentration of united type of activity and are not appreciably harmed through the distance between them. They nearest show that the most effective location strategy was initially chosen simply by a subset of the industry participants, the smaller U disk mak er and argue that imitation within collections of socially similar firms was the reason that these firms followed each other to Southeast Asia while the Japanese manufacturers and the large U manufacturers stayed in place. They raise industry periods and differences in industrial organization in the U and Japan as alternative explanations and effectively use the case material to disprove them.

Part 3 contains case studies of the three central nations and gives detailed comparative descriptions of their general economic and sector-specific policies, record patterns of foreign manufacturers and succeeding development of local capabilities, and discussion of for what reason firms chose locations. These chapters have a flat of detail that requires a persistence, but they give rich case material forward the problems of location choice and manufacturing in developing economies. My choice would be for case chapters with more hints to theory, but there are also benefits to the authors' les rhetorical manner Part 4 draws conclusions for armed force countries and multinational corporations, emphasizing the distinction between generic and industry-specific comparative advantages and analyzing the industrial conditions that favor agglomeration or dispersion of activities.

The disk drive industry is a fascinating story of industrial evolution, and the authors use it effectively to support their theory. The work puts meat on the usual story of geographical agglomeration and adds an evolutionary aspect by dint of documenting that agglomeration advantages can shift above time. It is a useful companion to Saxenian's (1994) theory of regional advantage and Harrison's (1994) analysis of multinational corporations. The evidence maintains Saxenian's claim that firm behavior determines whether agglomeration advantages will inference as it seems that the ability of a certain quantity of Japanese firms to internalize learning reduc the advantages of locating near them. Contrary to Harrison's (1994) suggestion that multinationals can disrupt local industrial clusters, the authors display that the disk drive manufacturers bring outed local clusters. Here, a direct comparison of the arguments and evidence would have been useful, as these works share concerns with international production compositions and their effects on loc ales. The case evidence allude tos that the flexibility of international production manner of makings can change and potentially disrupt local industry, as Harrison argues, on the other hand high-tech manufacturers in developing nations have incentives to exhibit local firms that also subserve goals of economic development.

This work is a useful illustration of the rewards of book-length treatments in making comparative studies of industrial evolution. The pair narrative dimensions of nation and time, the multiple theories of spatial evolution, and the rich case material call for a comprehensive and well-ordered treatment. The authors have organized their material well and have readyed both the theory and case evidence effectively. The volume is a rich source of ideas and evidence in a growing area of organizational research.