Taiwan's Entrepreneurs and International Coordination: Evolution of Global Production Network in Electronics and IT Industries

Abstract

This study applies the concept of coordinating entrepreneurship to explain the emergence of global production network. More specifically, this study explains and illustrates how Taiwan-born technopreneurs move between Silicon Valley and Taiwan's Hsinchu, thereby promoting Taiwan's computer and information technology (IT) industries. With their entrepreneurial spirit and social network, Taiwan-born technopreneurs even turn Dongguan, a farming village in south China, into a modern IT industrial city. This paper concludes that as a result of the coordinating efforts of these entrepreneurs, electronics and computer plants scattered around the globe are integrated into a global production network, as illustrated by IT firms in Silicon Valley, Hsinchu and Dongguan.     

The economics of Frank H. Knight: An Austrian interpretation

This paper interprets, in the modern Austrian economics perspective, Frank H. Knight's three core contributions; namely, economic methodology, theories of human action, uncertainty and entrepreneurship. Though Knight is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Chicago School of economics, this paper argues that Knight's contributions are essentially Austrian. Influenced by William James, Henri Bergson and Max Weber, Knight's subjectivist economics can be seen as a link between Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises in the history of Austrian subjectivism. This paper further suggests that Knight may be more appropriately located in the Austrian-German School, for the reason that the term “Austrian School” is too narrow to accommodate german influences. This paper concludes that Knight's legacies have left much to be appreciated by neoclassical mainstream economists in general and Austrian economists in particular. The author thanks Dian Kwan for her proof reading in this essay.     

Entrepreneurial Alertness and Discovery

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate Kirzner's concepts of entrepreneurial alertness and discovery in the subjectivist perspective. Specifically, it argues that the entrepreneurial discovery process is associated with the actor's interpretation framework, or the stock of knowledge, which is derived from everyday life experiences. Discovery in this context means that the actor interprets incoming information in a way different from perceptions of the general public. Two kinds of entrepreneurial discovery, namely ordinary and extraordinary, are discussed. In terms of mental constructs, ordinary discovery is a backward interpretation in a sense that the entrepreneur endeavours to exploit profit opportunities by doing some things better. This type of discovery largely promotes change within an existing situation. Extraordinary discovery is a forward interpretation that involves a new dimension of interpreting events. In this case, the entrepreneur explores profit opportunities by doing some things drastically different from the traditional. This type of discovery enhances revolutionary change to the economy. Inertia is explained, in the subjectivist perspective, as a result of actors taking knowledge for granted and being locked inside the old interpretation frameworks. The argument developed is applied to explain (1) why firms vertically integrate and, (2) why the socialist system impedes entrepreneurial alertness and discovery.     

Assessing ecosystem sustainability and management using fuzzy logic

Concern about the negative impacts of growth and development on protected area ecosystems has drawn attention to methods for assessing ecosystem sustainability and management. Existing non-stochastic and stochastic methods for assessing weak and strong sustainability of ecosystems have several limitations. The non-stochastic method does not account for errors in measuring attributes, stochastic variability in attributes, and uncertainty about the relationship between ecosystem attributes and states (degrees) of ecosystem sustainability. Although the stochastic method better accounts for errors in measuring attributes, and stochastic variability in attributes than the non-stochastic method, it requires information about the probability distributions of attributes for different states of sustainability. Such information is not readily available. The fuzzy logic method overcomes the limitations of the non-stochastic and stochastic methods, but requires fuzzifying an index of sustainability in the case of weak sustainability, fuzzifying individual attributes in the case of strong sustainability, specifying and estimating membership functions for low, medium and high ecosystem sustainability, selecting a rule to determine whether an ecosystem is strongly sustainable based on the conclusions for fuzzy propositions, and specifying fuzzy sets for truth qualifiers when evaluating conditional and qualified propositions. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs of using the fuzzy logic method depends on the knowledge, data, and information available about the ecosystem, the expertise of the persons doing the assessment, and other factors. The non-stochastic, stochastic and fuzzy logic methods can be used to rank management alternatives and select a preferred alternative in cases where the current state of the ecosystem is unsustainable. Ranking management alternatives using a fuzzy logic method requires ordering the fuzzy scores for alternatives. All three methods for ranking management alternatives call for a group preference ordering for management alternatives in cases where individuals in the group have different preferences for alternatives.     

Entrepreneurship in action: bringing together the individual,organizational and institutional dimensions of entrepreneurial action

There is increasing recognition that entrepreneurship research needs to achieve a better balance between studying to entrepreneurial activities and setting these activities in their wider context. It is important that these good intentions are realized and one way of doing this is to bring together ethnographic research with concepts from sociology and from pragmatist thinking. In this study, field research material is interwoven with a set of key concepts to ensure that balanced attention is paid to issues at the levels of the enterprising individual, the organization and societal institutions. The field research is innovative in combining depth study of several enterprises and their founders with the analysis of broader aspects of ‘entrepreneurship in society’. It achieves this through a process of ‘everyday ethnographic’ observation, reading, conversation and ongoing analysis. In the spirit of a pragmatist conception of social science, the underlying logic of entrepreneurial action is identified. This is a logic which needs to be appreciated by all of those who wish to understand and/or engage with the entrepreneurial dimension of contemporary social and economic life.     

Management “flavours of the month”: their role in managers' lives

Existing analyses and critiques of the succession of management fads and fashions entering managerial discourse and activities are complemented and developed by drawing on participant observation research carried out in an organization utilizing a variety of “packaged innovations”. It is shown that what are sometimes mocked as “flavours of the month” (FOMs) play a role in the double-controlproblem faced by all managers: the problem of managing their personal identities, careers and understandings at the same time as contributing to the overall control of the organization in which they are managers. Managers in the organization studied are shown generally to be critical of the “flavour of the month effect” but there is nevertheless an equivocality about how such ideas and practices can function.     

Finding a Bowling Partner: The Role of Stakeholders in Activating Civil Society in Germany,Spain and the United Kingdom

An 'activism index', combining data on membership of civil associations and societies and the level of activism suggests that, notwithstanding cultural differences, civil activism in European countries could be a great deal higher than its current level. If higher civic participation is to be achieved, each stakeholder group within local governance can play an 'activation' role in relation to citizens, both as individuals and in relation to the voluntary organizations which represent citizens in their collective activities. In practice, different stakeholder groups play this role in widely differing ways in the contexts of Germany, Spain and the UK. In the future, we can expect the lead role in activating civil society in each country to be taken by different stakeholders, depending on the trust currently placed in them by other stakeholders in the community and by the resources which they command.     

Play at work,learning and innovation

ABSTRACT

Suggesting a virtuous triangle constituting public service innovation of new governances, innovation and learning, the paper examines how and why a particular mode of learning occurs: that of play. Having identified an absence of research literature on play as a catalyst for new ideas in public services, the paper argues that the diversified nature of public services and disciplinary intermixing offers fertile ground for playing with new service ideas. Our conception of play avoids functional interpretations, such as Amabile or individualizing the results of play and instead draws upon Vygotsky’s social learning theory to conceptualize play as a group activity from which new ideas emerge and suggest a new framework for understanding purposive play at work and the contribution it can make to public service innovation.