| Summary: | Since the early 1960s, American companies have
consistently dominated the computer markets in virtually all
OECD countries with one notable exception: Japan is the only
OECD country where domestic companies have successfully
rolled back American corporate domination of its computer
market to under thirty percent. Furthermore, Japanese
companies have emerged as the only serious long-term
challengers to American technological and commercial
leadership on international markets. This is quite a
remarkable achievement considering Japan's relatively late
entry into a market where the development constraints have
been as severe as in other industrialized nations.
This thesis examines the historically-parallel
transformation of two groups of "industrial followers" - the
Japanese and French populations of computer companies - in
order to shed light on relevant issues of strategic
importance: How do we account for the rapid ascendancy of
the Japanese computer industry to international
competitiveness whereas other national computer development
efforts have been forestalled? To what extent is the
Japanese pattern of computer development unique, and to what
extent does it conform to the prevailing pattern of
international competition? In our comparison of the
"deviant" Japanese case with the "control" French case, the
operative questions are defined as: What combinations of
conditions could account for patterned variations in (1)
aggregate domestic industry outcomes; and (2) the trajectory
or path of domestic industrial change over time? Three
major sets of conclusions concerning the parameters of
international competition, national outcomes, and national
trajectories of development, emerge from the comparison.
First, it will be argued that the computer industry leader
IBM defined the parameters of international market
competition for at least two decades following the mid-
1960s. Secondly, it will be argued that Japanese and French
domestic industry outcomes fell within those parameters.
Different national strategies determined just where within
the parameters domestic outcomes lie; that is to say, they
account for the variance in Japanese and French computer
industry outcomes. National strategies, however, did not
change those parameters. The competitive success of the
Japanese industry is attributable to "market-conforming"
strategies that generally respected and worked within the
prevailing terms of international market competition as
defined by IBM. French strategies, for the most part, have
struggled against the terms of international competition and
have subsequently failed to advance the competitiveness of
the domestic industry. Finally, comparison of Japan and
France suggests the path of national computer industry
change over time has been non-linear (or multi-linear) and
contingent on the interplay between the domestic structure
of state-business power relations, on the one hand, and on
the other hand, response from the broader international
market. In the short term, different power structures of
state-business relations in the domestic policy process
account for the divergence in national trajectories of
development. In the long-term, however, response from the
broader international market had a decisive, if indirect,
influence on the partial convergence of national development
trajectories. Put differently, the comparison confirms the
strategic developmental orientation of Japanese and French
computer industry policy. National policy, however, were
only able to advance the strategic interests of domestic
industry when they conformed to the prevailing terms of
international competition as defined by the industry leader
IBM. When policy ignored or attempted to challenge head-on
the prevailing terms of global competition, their strategic
efforts failed, forcing a revision of national policy and a
reorientation of collective action on the market. This
study affirms the industry leader's role in defining the
first order constraints on the development path of industry
followers.
|
|---|
