Reshaping of the Global Economy
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In Lean and Mean Bennett Harrison, a political economist who specializes in corporate restructuring, argues that despite current talk to the contrary, it is still big companies who are responsible for creating new jobs (5). Small companies, according to Harrison's research, retain their traditional role as suppliers. The production and selling of central commodities which Harrison identifies as those visible in nearly every home, commodities such as television sets and cars, provides clues as to which industries will generate the most profit (6). What has begun to happen is that global networking has created the Grand Alliance with megacorporations such as Philips, Thomson, and NBC banding together to share technological and financial tips allowing them to increase the efficiency of their large scale production.Harrison emphasizes repeatedly that the emergence of small companies as the dominant force driving the global economy is largely myth. In dividing the consumer market between mass and niche markets, it is corporations who can most successfully cater to the entire range of sectors (7). Concentrated economic power is changing its shape even as there exists an ongoing decentralization of power (8-9). The new paradigm emerging is that of network production which relies upon "concentration without centralization" (9). Harrison observes that examination of the current reshaping of global economy gains its power by limiting its scope to how major corporations are reo
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goal. This can strike the reader, if their own perspective is a bit more humanistic, as a tad ironic. Harrison's specialization has led him to concentrate on the economic patterning of "global webs", (a term coined by Robert Reich) (9), and yet he seems perpetually to lose sight of the more immediate impact of their effect on interpersonal relationships. Individuals unable to conform to the restrictive standards of the corporate approach are either to be jettisoned out of the system or perform miserably within it.
Harrison is more interesting when he offers systematic overviews of specific sites. In analyzing Italian industrial districts, the Silicon Valley production system, and large firms in Japan and Europe, Harrison offers cogent analyses of these economic centers as sites which showcase how large scale production centers are forging the outline of how future international conglomerates will operate. Harrison is perhaps most interesting when he is contemplating the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the theory of "small firm-led economic growth" as applied to Italian industrial districts (75). Harrison reviews that the issues of commercialization and innovation which are traditionally seen as characteristic of
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Approximate Word count = 1439
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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