Alternatives to Economic Globalization by Cavanagh John & Mander Jerry

Author:Cavanagh, John & Mander, Jerry [Cavanagh, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2004-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

196

CHANGES IN MANUFACTURING SCALE

Changes in energy, transportation, and agriculture systems will make them more compatible with local economies and eliminate the wasteful resource uses that go with long-distance supply lines, marketing, and travel. Localizing production and manufacturing will also serve ecological and democratic goals.

Paul Hawken has described recent changes in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, “where a sharp loss of mass-production jobs (geared to an export-oriented economy) since 1970 has been countered by a phenomenal growth in small businesses.” In this region of four million people, there are 325,000 registered businesses. A combination of small artisanal firms, local labor unions, governments, and trade associations have cooperated to jointly purchase materials and share services and market assessments while also instituting common standards and quality assurances.

This activity is a further expression of the efforts of small manufacturers to “cluster” into “horizontal networks” to share resources. Firms that might have been competitive with one another come together for mutual benefit and to effectively combat the scale or size of much larger external corporations seeking to make inroads in the local market.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.