Industrializing Knowledge

Compares the economic effects of university research in the USA and Japan. Incorporating historical, sociological and industrial perspectives, the book discusses the mechanics of university-industry interactions and how policies encouraging such interactions can address regional/national needs.

[Knowledge, Organizational Evolution, and Market Creation] presents an integrative framework for understanding organizational change in emerging economies. . . the book distills a tremendous amount of research relevant for understanding the culture of business in India. . . This book is important for its contribution to the literature on the rise of Indian business and economy. It has a wide reaching theoretical scope and makes significant linkages with cognitive, behavioral and cultural theories. . . Ms. Surie s research on Indian firms thus presents a rare glimpse into the organizational and economic forces that are globalizing Indian industry from steel to software. Dinesh Sharma, Far Eastern Economic Review An astute study that especially focuses on the invaluable qualities of entrepreneurship and distributive innovation. . . . Exhaustively researched, and featuring appendices packed with additional tables and statistics of hard data, Knowledge, Organizational Evolution, and Market Creation is especially recommended for college library business and economic studies shelves. Midwest Book Review The Economics Shelf India has become a global economic powerhouse and Sud de Surie offers in this book the first systematic analysis of the global spread of Indian businesses. She skillfully maps the foreign expansion of Indian firms in five different industries, from steel, automotive components and machinery to software and biotechnology, showing that economic, political and cultural factors need to be present in order for companies to internationalize successfully. This book sets a new standard for research on international business. It is essential reading for those interested in the increasing role of emerging companies in global competition. Mauro F. Guillén, University of Pennsylvania, US Where do new multinationals come from? How do firms in developing economies become global players? Gita Sud de Surie provides new perspectives on internationalization and the multinational corporation by focusing on firms in emerging markets rather than established multinationals in industrialized economies. She shows that firms in developing countries are not passive recipients of technology; rather, the attempt to absorb new technologies builds capabilities and generates new aspirations propelling them from being adopters of technology to innovators and participants in the global knowledge economy. Knowledge, Organizational Evolution, and Market Creation documents the emergence of the Indian multinational by looking at data from firms in the old economy, such as those in manufacturing, steel-making, automotive components and heavy machinery and the new economy such as software and biotechnology. The author provides insights on knowledge transfer, innovation and capability building processes through in-depth case studies in these industries and suggests that both entrepreneurship and distributed innovation are critical for the growth of firms globally. This book will be valuable for scholars in international management, business policy and strategy, organization and management theory, economic sociology and history and technology and innovation management. Analysts, consultants and executives will find many useful insights in this book as well.

Herbert Blumer wrote continuously and voluminously, and consequently left a vast array of unpublished work at the time of his death in 1987. This posthumously published volume testifies further to his perceptive analysis of large-scale social organizations and elegant application of symbolic interactionist principles. Blumer's focus on the processual nature of social life and on the significance of the communicative interpretation of social contexts is manifest in his theory of industrialization and social change. His theory entails three major points: industrialization must be seen in processual terms, and the industrialization process is different for different historical periods; the consequences of industrialization are a function of the interpretive nature of human action and resembles a neutral framework within which groups interpret the meaning of industrial relations, and the industrial sector must be viewed in terms of power relations; industrial societies contain inherently conflicting interests. The editors' introductory essay outlines Blumer's metatheoretical stance (symbolic interactionism) and its emphasis on the adjustive character of social life. It places Blumer's theory in the context of contemporary macro theory, including world systems theory, resource dependence theory, and modernization theory.

Discusses the skills and flexibility needed by individuals and firms in industrialised countries to take advantage of technological progress in order to maintain economic growth and prevent structural unemployment.

With the competitiveness of firms in an open and integrated world environment increasingly reliant on technological capability, universities are being asked to take on a growing role in stimulating economic growth. Beyond imparting education, they are now viewed as sources of industrially valuable technical skills, innovations, and entrepreneurship. Developed and developing countries alike have made it a priority to realize this potential of universities to spur growth, a strategy that calls for coordinated policy actions.

Kristine Bruland looks at the Norwegian experience to show how a small economy created a technological infrastructure.