Collaborative Research on the Geography of High-Technology Industry in Japan

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As new patterns of industrial growth and development have emerged since World War II, scholars have developed new theoretical frameworks to describe and explain these patterns. One line of inquiry has sought to examine the ramifications of changing labor requirements of different industries, while other social scientists have focused on institutional dimensions of technological innovation. This collaborative project aims to synthesize these and other approaches through detailed study of the locational decisions made by four high- technology industrial sectors in Japan -- semiconductors, computers, biotechnology, and software. With the assistance of scholars in Japan, the principal investigators will gather data on the location of these industries and of related activities in production complexes, which will enable them to produce maps of the geographic patterns of high-technology industries and complexes. These maps will provide the bases for a second stage of research, which will consist of a set of related inquiries into the processes and conditions that have led Japanese high-technology firms to develop new patterns of activity. Central to these inquiries are the conduct of structured interviews with a carefully selected sample of corporate officials. Data from these interviews and from other sources will be analyzed to test hypotheses relating industrial organization and operations with locational patterns and processes. This research will make significant contributions in a number of diverse ways. Through careful analysis of one set of industries in Japan, the relative contributions of each of the major current theoretical perspectives can be assessed and possibly reconciled. The research also will provide valuable empirical data and interpretations of value for those studying contemporary industrial geography in any setting, and especially for those seeking more complete understandings of the distinctive character of modern Japanese economic organization.