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Innovations In Competitive Manufacturing, Paul Swamidass

Paul Swamidass

Competitive manufacturing in the US was made possible by the progress made in a number of areas. For example, progress in competitive manufacturing is attributable to advances in the strategic use if manufacturing, cellular manufacturing, lean manufacturing, flexible automation, total quality management, supply chain management, design for manufacturing, mass customization, improved costing, and so on.

Pressured by competition, US manufacturers began the journey to competitive manufacturing in the late seventies; their success brought revolutionary changes to US manufacturing.

The book is arranged in 13 different chapters, each covering a major subject within manufacturing management. Each chapter consists of one or …

Us Manufacturing Extension Partnerships: Technology Policy Reinvented, Philip Shapira

Philip Shapira

The US manufacturing extension partnership (MEP) is examined as an example of the new partnership paradigm in US technology policy. The MEP provides technology assistance services, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. Influenced by aims to reinvent government and reorient technology policy, the MEP seeks to be comprehensive, collaborative, and demand-driven. However, the MEP’s partnered management style is constrained by political and industrial systems that continue to operate on traditional lines. After probing these tensions, the paper offers insights for the MEP’s future development and for other technology and innovation policies that seek to emulate the MEP’s partnership approach.

Cultural Entrepreneurship: Stories, Legitimacy And The Acquisition Of Resources., Michael Lounsbury, Mary Ann Glynn

michael lounsbury

We define cultural entrepreneurship as the process of storytelling that mediates between extant stocks of entrepreneurial resources and subsequent capital acquisition and wealth creation. We propose a framework that focuses on how entrepreneurial stories facilitate the crafting of a new venture identity that serves as a touchstone upon which legitimacy may be conferred by investors, competitors, and consumers, opening up access to new capital and market opportunities. Stories help create competitive advantage for entrepreneurs through focal content shaped by two key forms of entrepreneurial capital: firm-specific resource capital and industry-level institutional capital. We illustrate our ideas with anecdotal entrepreneurial stories …

Agglomeration, Enterprise Size, And Productivity, Edward J. Feser

Edward J Feser

Much research on agglomeration economies, and particularly recent work that builds on Marshall's concept of the industrial district, postulates that benefits derived from proximity between businesses are strongest for small enterprises. This paper investigates this hypothesis, examining the degree to which local business externalities differ in magnitude and type among large and small enterprises in two U.S. manufacturing sectors. A four factor micro-level production function with oft-cited sources of agglomeration economies (local input supply, labor pools, knowledge spillovers) modeled as technology parameters and dummy variables representing varying definitions of plant size (and type, i.e., single or multi establishment unit) are …

On The Ellison–Glaeser Geographic Concentration Index, Edward J. Feser

Edward J Feser

I use confidential employment data to investigate the empirical properties of a recent industry geographic concentration index (and related index of industry co-agglomeration) proposed by Ellison and Glaeser (1997). The results show that Ellison and Glaeser’s theoretical finding that their concentration measures are robust to differences in the level of spatial aggregation in the underlying employment data does not generally hold in practice. This implies that sensitivity testing for alternative spatial units should accompany any analysis with the concentration measures.

Technology On The Factory Floor Iii: Technology Use And Training In Us Manufacturing Firms, Paul Swamidass

Paul Swamidass

This is the third issue of the Technology on the Factory Floor series. The study was sponsored by the Manufacturing Institute and the National Science Foundation. Data for this study of manufacturing technology use was collected from 1,025 manufacturing plant managers during 1997 using a modified survey questionnaire originally used in the 1993 study.

The findings were: Since the 1993 study, inventory turnover increased, rejection and rework reduced, and cycle time and manufacturing costs decreased; overall, there was measurable improvement in manufacturing since 1993. Other findings were: larger plants use technologies more extensively than smaller plants; exporters use more manufacturing …

Old And New Theories Of Industry Clusters, Edward J. Feser

Edward J Feser

The paper reviews the broad range of theories and ideas that constitute, often implicitly, the logic behind strategic cluster policies. The title of the paper notwithstanding, there is no theory of industry clusters, per se. Even Porter’s (1990) seminal contribution is more a theory of firm competitiveness than clusters. There is, instead, a variety of older and newer theories of 1) the interrelationships between economic actors that clusters describe, and 2) the implications of such interrelationships for economic growth and development. Industry clusters have proven a useful way of characterizing webs of relationships between and among firms and other institutions. …

Workplace Safety Is Everyone's Concern, Douglas J. Swanson Ed.D Apr

Douglas J. Swanson, Ed.D APR

No abstract provided.

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

Technology On The Factory Floor Ii: Benchmarking Manufacturing Technology Use In The Usa, Paul Swamidass

Paul Swamidass

This monograph is the result of the second joint effort of the Manufacturing Institute of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the author for studying the use of fifteen different manufacturing technologies in the US. Timely support by the National Science Foundation enabled this second study to be expanded to a larger number of participants. A total of 1,121 members of NAM participated in this study. Hard technologies studied were: AGV, CAD, CAM, CIM, CNC, FMS, LAN, Robotics and automated inspection, and soft technologies studied were: TQM, JIT, SQC, MRP, MRP II, and manufacturing cells.

Selected findings are: CAD, …

Reaching Entrepreneurs Where They Live And Work: A Communication And Marketing Strategy For The Oklahoma Home-Based Business Association, Douglas J. Swanson Ed.D Apr

Douglas J. Swanson, Ed.D APR

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Home-Based Business Owners: A Market Worth Pursuing, Douglas J. Swanson Ed.D Apr

Douglas J. Swanson, Ed.D APR

No abstract provided.

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …