Competition and Cooperation in Taiwan's Information Technology Industry: Inter-firm Networks and Industrial Upgrading

Unlike most studies that offer post-hoc, why-it-happened explanations of Taiwan's remarkable economic growth, Dr. Poon's examines how it happened. Using the Global Commodity Chains perspective and applying it to Taiwan's information technology industry, she illuminates not just the outcomes of development processes but the processes themselves. Her book is the first systematic study so far of inter-firm networks in Taiwan, how they operate, and how they contributed so much to the country's industrial upgrading. With her Global Commodity Chains perspective she is also able to find and lay out in systematic detail the linkages that connect the larger issues of world economic and industrial development, and the meso-level policies and micro-level strategies that shape the process and ends of Taiwan's IT industrial upgrading. The result is a penetrating examination of how various forms of inter-firm networks are created and leveraged by governments and private businesses working together, and the effect this can have on both the local and global dynamics of an economically developing nation.

One useful strategy to increase the competitiveness of firms in the global market is to leverage their strengths through inter-firm networks. Little attention has been paid, however, to the link between these networks and industrial upgrading at the national level. Dr.Poon offers the first comprehensive analysis of how various types of inter-firm networks are formed, and how they are leveraged by government and private businessses, in this case engaged in upgrading Taiwan's important IT industry. With her Global Commodity Chains perspective, Dr. Poon captures the global industrial dynamics fueling competition and cooperation among Taiwan's IT firms, and between these firms and their counterparts in other countries. Her case studies show in detail, therefore, how small- and medium-size Taiwanese companies collaborate among themselves to form global logistics networks and R&D consortia, and how in doing so they increase their strengths, overcome weaknesses, grasp opportunties, and avoid threats from within and without.