Industrial Upgrading and Public Research Institutes — The Case of Taiwan’s Machine Tool Industry

• Main Author: 何翊寧
• Other Authors: 王振寰
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/66101665508264802323

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 中山人文社會科學研究所 === 96 === This thesis is about the upgrading of Taiwan’s machine tool industry and the role of the state on this industry’s transformation. Taiwan’s maching tool industry faced an urgent challenge after the 1990s, as the counterparts in advanced countries have made rapid progess on technological level, while other industrializing countries, such as South Korea and China, had also been catching up quickly. Due to the fact that most of the firms in Taiwan’s machine tool industry were small and medium-sized enterprises that were not affordable financially to do cutting-edge technology research, the burden therefore fall upon the state. This essay has three major findings. To begin with, the state has gradually become an instructor in helping the development of the industry. The state’s role has changed from being an aloof promoter by using various policy instruments to help developing the industry as a whole, to utilizing fiscal incentives to encourage enterprises to engage into R&D activities, and to encouraging the formation of industrial consortia after 2001. Secondly, the role of the major pubic research institute, the Mechanical Industrial Research Laboratories（MIRL）of the Industrial Technology Research Institute has changed from a remoted research oriented institute to one that engage heavily with local firms, from paying attention only to develop new machine models to ally with local firms to develop core components in the machine tool. Thirdly, the formation of R&D alliances, led by MIRL, has largely upgraded the capability of the domestic enterprises. This not only shows in the upgrading of local firms’ technological competence, but also in the improvement of organizational capability of specialized module suppliers and, the reduction of cost structure of the products.