The purpose of this paper is to clarify employee competence with respect to township enterprises in Shandong Province located in the region of the Huang (Yellow) River Delta. The author delineates issues associated with employee education and improving the quality of workers for the development of the village and township enterprises. The research is based not only on a review of the relevant literature, but more importantly on interviews surveys recently conducted at township enterprises in Shadong Province. The author proposes solutions to some of the obstacles which hinder these township enterprises. Specifically, the following problems were identified. 1) In contrast to the past, a technically-skilled workforce will be required to meet the needs of township enterprises. 2) The structure of the township enterprise workforce is still based on a short-term contract system called "special seasonal labor", and this employment policy hinders the improvement of technology and technical skills. 3) The township enterprises are trouble with a shortage of quality managers, workers and technology. The source of this problem stems from factors affecting rural education and the processes by which the township enterprises were established. 4) It was found that since the township enterprises these days are competing with both large domestic corporations and with those from abroad, it is imperative that these township enterprises improve the quality of their products, technology, and personnel. 5) It was found that employee's education and training is in great need of improvement. In the future it is imperative that educational reforms and public sector budgetary spending will be tailored to meet the demands of township enterprises.

View full abstract

A great deal of research has been conducted concerning the local agriculture in areas of Japan. There is however, a lack of research dealing with the consumption of agricultural products. At first, the author describes and explains fruit and vegetables supply strategy or buying-in strategy based on data derived from "A" supermarket in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture. Usually large retail store chains in local cities such as "A" supermarket is called "regional leader". Then the aim of this paper is to reveal the structure of fruit and vegetables distribution between large markets in metropolis and small markets in local cities in Japan. Large number of fruit and vegetables were laid in stock from local wholesale market, especially in popular-priced goods and basic items. "A" supermarket also do that and they often adopt adroitly way to get enough commodities in low price. It is called "relay of production". "Regional leaders" sift their channel of fruit supply by season. Then they try to get enough supply in low prices for long period of time. But such kinds of buying-in can be held within the local wholesale market and these depend on the national scale fruit and vegetable supply system of Japan. But for high quality goods, local wholesale markets do not play important roles. Usually these commodities are short in supply in the market. Major producers of fruit and vegetables are apt to ship them to metropolis such as Tokyo and Osaka where wholesale market keep higher purchasing prices than the local markets. Such tendency of distribution has great influence upon the merchandising strategy of local retail stores. Therefore, "regional leader" adopt another resource to get high quality goods. They make deal with some middlemen of metropolitan market and some merchants of the producing districts. And in some cases they directly contract with farmers. In brief, quantitatively large and popular-priced goods can be purchased from local markets but high quality goods can not be, still it is quantitatively small. About the former, local markets can be regarded as effective but about the latter, they may not be effective. Under such conditions "regional leaders" function as two ways, one is to purchase from local markets and the other is to transact business with metropolitan markets or producing districts. To put it another way one is to function within wholesale market system of Japan and the other is to try to establish relations with the outside of that wholesale system. This two way function can be found in fruit and vegetable buying-in strategy from overseas countries not only in domestic system of fruit and vegetables, as we have seen it. They usually get basic items from large trading companies, sogo-syosya, or wholesale markets. But in case of higher grade or strategical items they chose another way. In that case, they often have business with small import merchants located in local cities or towns.

View full abstract

Examining the urban network planning instituted in the new regional planning policy (1993) of Germany, I remarked the fact that small and medium-sized firms did not intend to participate in it (Morikawa, 1999). What is the reasons? What kind of interfirm networks do small and medium-sized firms generate? Therefore, I will examine the present situation of studying, especially innovation-oriented, interfirm networks in Europe in order to resolve the above questions. This paper aims to review the studies of interfirm networks of small and medium-sized firms in Europe, in connection with the concepts of flexible specialization and vertical disintegration occurring in the shift to post-Fordism. The findings are as follows: Under the hypothesis of flexible specialization Scott (1988) urgued the formation of new industrial spaces such as Silicon Valley and Third Italy as well as large metropolitan regions based on transaction cost analysis. There, interfirm networks of small and medium-sized firms seen to be generated in favor of local milieu and industrial districts where the contact of managers and managing engineers of each firm can usually be conducted. But I am skeptical of explaining the shift to post-Fordism by considering preferably the matter of new industrial spaces with insufficient refering to the changing old industrial areas and the growing multinationals. Although numerous interfirm networks have recently been developed as innovation-oriented, we cannot recognize that they tend to be increasingly developing in future, such as represented in Third Italy and Neckar-Alb regions. At present, both regions are rather confronted with the changing structure. I presume that insufficient attention has been paid to the sustainability of flexible production until today. At the same time, interfirm linkages are usually generated not only in local and regional level but also in national level, because each firm is technologically so specialized that it cannot ask for innovation co-operation with firms each other in spatial proximity. Consequently, spatial extent of firms consisting of networks may not probably in most cases correspond to that of the urban networks, though spatial extent of them is not clearly illustrated in previous studies on interfirm networks. Although interfirm linkages are attached importance to innovation of small and medium-sized firms, larger firms are more frequently favored by networks for innovation than small firms, unlike the theoretical thinking. The concepts derived from such studies were quickly transformed into regional policy strategies, different from regional planning policy (Raumordnungspolitik), in Germany. Networks and co-operations almost became key words for successful regional economic development. But a interfirm network is no paracea. Grotz and Braum (1997a) emphasized that there is a real danger of enhancing provincial thinking in the practice of regional economic development policy.

View full abstract