Search

This article attempts to assess the contending perspectives based on a comparative study of three regional production networks for the manufacturing of standardized electronics products. Pacific-rim cities have been increasingly incorporated into the regional production networks of transnational corporations (TNCs) - not only from the traditional industrial centre of the USA, Canada and Japan, but also from the newly industrialized Asian countries, specifically the overseas Chinese' capital-dominated economies of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Various perspectives have been put forward to characterize the changing regional division of labor and its impact on economic and industrial development - both in terms of the quantitative issues of economic growth and job creation, and the qualitative issues of technology transfer and skill formation. A regional production network refers to the totality of the external linkages created by contracting relationships among firms in different countries in the Pacific-rim context that involve a technical and spatial division of labor to develop, manufacture and market specific commodities.