Searching Strategies for Survival through New Product Prototyping by Industrial Districts Under Recession : An Econo-geographic Field Research on Denim Jeans Production in Japan

这项研究概述了日本Setouchi区对牛仔牛仔裤生产的广泛实地研究。特别强调“灵活的专业化”如何在该地区发挥作用，从而使小型专业公司的集聚能够在供需双方的不确定环境下实现创造性的产品原型(Piore和Sable，1984；Seki，1993)。人们普遍认为，与产品原型和大规模制造过程由大型旗舰公司分级协调的传统经销网络相比，水平专家网络在高不确定性下提供了更灵活的生产能力。然而，我们在过去几年的实地研究发现，小型专业公司之间的等级制度仍然面临着越来越激烈的环境不确定性。一方面，这些小公司失去了以前的旗舰公司，这些公司将生产地点转移到…以外更多的地区承受着来自低成本外国制造商的压力。国内生产网络专注于对价格不那么敏感、要求更高的消费者，目前正处于反复试验的过程中，正在将自己转变为横向专业网络，并自行进行创造性的产品原型制作。另一方面，仅仅是因为他们在产品原型方面缺乏经验，某些层级方面仍然存在，因为他们付出了巨大努力来寻找新的旗舰公司，以补充专业公司不足的原型能力。然而，与此同时，这些相位似乎假定了面临高度不确定性的一定范围的变异，从进化的角度来看，这似乎是适应性理性的。为了规范新的旗舰公司可能发挥的作用，本研究利用奈特对“不确定性”和“风险”的区分。此外，传统的经络系统和最近的横向专家网络被假设为两种截然不同的理想类型，分别擅长处理“风险”和“不确定性”。最后，在报告了牛仔牛仔裤专家网络在Setouchi区所面临的困难之后，我们的实地研究中的两个简短的案例描述展示了在高不确定性较少的情况下，通过试错的不同适应变化模式

This research outlines an extensive field research of denim jeans production in the Setouchi district in Japan. A special emphasis is placed on how 'flexible specialization' functions in the district so that the agglomeration of small specialist companies can realize creative product prototyping, surrounded by uncertain environments on both supply and demand sides (Piore and Sable, 1984 ; Seki, 1993). There is a general belief that horizontal specialist networks provide more flexible production capabilities under high uncertainty, compared to traditional keiretsu networks where product prototyping and mass manufacturing processes are hierarchically coordinated by large flagship companies. However, our field research in the past years has found that hierarchical aspects amongst small specialist companies still remain facing ever fiercer environmental uncertainties. Such small companies, on the one hand, lose their former flagship companies which shift their production venues out of the … More district under the pressures from low-cost foreign manufacturers. Focused on less price-sensitive and more demanding consumers, domestic production networks are now in the trial and error process of transforming themselves into horizontal specialist networks and conduct creative product prototyping on their own. On the other hand, simply due to their inexperience in product prototyping, certain hierarchical aspects persist, since they make tremendous efforts to find new flagship companies who complement inadequate prototyping capabilities of the specialist companies. At the same time, however, such aspects seem to presume a certain range of variations facing high uncertainty, which seems to be adaptively rational from an evolutionary perspective. In order to formalize the functions which new flagship companies may play, this research employs Knight's distinction between 'uncertainty' and 'risk'. Further, traditional keiretsu systems and recent horizontal specialist networks are hypothesized as two distinctive ideal types which are good at handling 'risk' and 'uncertainty' respectively. Lastly, after reporting the difficulties which denim jeans specialist networks face in the Setouchi district, two brief case descriptions from our field research demonstrate different patterns of adaptive variations by trial and error under high uncertainty Less