Project-based industries and craft-like production: structure, location, and performance

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Garment District Performance: S(weatshop)-Efficiency vs. I(nnovation)-Efficiency

Garment districts have always had a form of distinctive industrial organization arising from strong agglomeration economies based on common skills and the need for direct coordination among fashion designers, manufacturers, contractors, and buyers. These local clusters of apparel-related firms are often populated by small and medium sized enterprises whose production is coordinated by large manufacturers, jobbers, or other lead firms. However, large manufacturers are disappearing from garment districts in the United States and other industrialized countries as import competition forces downsizing and business closures. Increasingly it is the smaller firms that tend to survive. Based on field research, this paper will compare the different evolutionary paths of the economic structures, contracting arrangements, and innovation patterns in the garment districts of New York City and Cholet, France. It finds that the two districts had similar economic organizations through the early 1980s, but that they have subsequently responded in very different ways to continuing import shocks. New York City has adopted an enhanced version of its traditional hierarchical contracting mechanisms between jobbers and contractors, whereas Cholet has abandoned hierarchical contracting in favor of more collaborative relationships with external supply chains and a greater reliance on co-contracting relationships within local production networks. Both New York City and Cholet continue to draw upon standard sources of agglomeration economies, but have adopted a different set of arrangements for promoting dynamic efficiency. The experience of these two districts leads us to posit two distinctive models for improving garment district performance - a sweatshop model (S-efficiency) and an innovation model (I-efficiency). These models are fruitful for understanding the performance of other garment districts in France, Italy, and the UK that are part of our study

Older Workers: An Essential Resource for Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Jobs Council, the Governor’s principal advisory board on workforce development, established the Blue Ribbon Commission on Older Workers in 1997 to analyze the labor market for older workers in the Commonwealth and to recommend policies to improve the economic status of the older labor force. The Commission held numerous hearings, town meetings, and focus groups to solicit the views of older workers, employers, labor organizations, and training professionals, and it reviewed the findings of extensive research on older workers in Massachusetts

Modes of incorporation: a conceptual and empirical critique

Entering the debate over segmented assimilation, this paper seeks to refocus discussion on a core, but neglected claim: that inter-group disparities among immigrant offspring derive from differences in a contextual feature shared by immigrant and immigrant descendants: a nationality’s mode of incorporation.  The paper engages in both theoretical and empirical assessment.  We critically examine the concept of mode of incorporation, demonstrating that its operational implications have not been correctly understood; consequently, the core hypothesis has never been appropriately tested.  The second part of the paper implements those tests, making use of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey.  We do so by using nationality as a proxy for mode of incorporation, systematically contrasting more advantaged against less advantaged nationalities.    We show: (a) that tests systematically varying modes classified as more or less advantageous yield inconsistent outcomes; (b) that positive or negative modes of incorporation are associated with few long-lasting effects; (c) that differences in governmental reception are particularly unlikely to be associated with interethnic disparities; and (d) that compared to theoretically relevant nationalities, neither Mexicans, a nationality assigned to a negative mode of incorporation, nor pre-Mariel Cubans, a nationality assigned to positive mode of incorporation, prove distinctive

In Search of the High Road: Meaning and Evidence

This article is the first in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. We will be highlighting important research themes that have been featured in the journal over its many years of publication. In this article, Paul Osterman reviews research on the quality of jobs and recent debates over “High Road” and “Low Road” approaches to employment practices. Scholars and policy advocates frequently utilize the distinction between High Road and Low Road firms as a framework for efforts to improve the quality of work in low-wage employers. This article assesses the logic and evidence that underlies this construct. The author provides a definition of the concept and examines the evidence behind the assumption that firms have a choice in how they design their employment policies. He then takes up the assertion that firms that adopt a High Road model can “do well by doing good” and adds precision to this claim by reviewing the evidence that a profit-maximizing firm would benefit from following the High Road path. The article concludes by suggesting a research agenda and providing a framework for policy that flows from the conclusions drawn from the existing research base