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

随着新的工业增长和发展模式的出现， 自第二次世界大战以来，学者们发展了新的理论框架 来描述和解释这些模式。 调查的一条线索是 审查劳动力需求变化的后果， 不同的行业，而其他社会科学家则专注于 技术创新的制度层面。 这 一个合作项目旨在综合这些方法和其他方法 通过详细研究四个高层决策者的选址决策， 日本的技术工业部门--半导体，计算机， 生物技术和软件。 在学者的帮助下， 日本，主要调查人员将收集有关地点的数据， 这些行业和生产联合体的相关活动， 这将使他们能够绘制出 高科技产业和综合体。 这些地图将提供 第二阶段研究的基础，将包括一套 相关调查的过程和条件，导致 日本高科技公司开发新的活动模式。 这些调查的核心是进行结构化面谈 与精心挑选的公司高管进行了交流 数据从 这些采访和其他来源将被分析，以测试 有关产业组织和运作的假设， 位置模式和过程。 这项研究将在许多方面做出重大贡献。 不同的方式。 通过仔细分析一组行业， 日本，每个主要电流的相对贡献 理论观点可以被评估并可能被调和。 的 研究还将提供有价值的经验数据和解释 对于那些研究当代工业地理学的人来说， 设置，特别是对于那些寻求更完整的理解 现代日本经济组织的显著特征。

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.