Strangers in local maturing industries

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26590070
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Management
• Research Institution: Tokuyama University
• Principal Investigator: Yasuhiro Ota 徳山大学, 経済学部, 教授 (90299321)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 制度 / ネットワーク / よそ者 / 繊維産業 / 産地

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The study investigates the roles of “strangers” in local maturing industries. Stranger is individual that is not firmly embedded in given prevailing institutional environments such as local firm’s behavioral routines in R&D and sales, and their business networks.
Through case studies on Japanese textile industry, I showed that some strangers are engaged in local industrial communities in specific regions, and others travel some regions. I also revealed that “strangers” are attempting to reorganize industrial communities by building new business partnership within and between region(s) to innovate their products and so on. Future research should examine what affects the outcomes of their activities and how the findings above could be theoretically integrated into other related fields such as sociology.

Free Research Field

経営学