Ng Yuen Shan, Sandra, Wong Cho Fai, James. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Bibliography: leaves [75]-[77] / acknowledgement --- p.ii / ABSTRACT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION / Background --- p.1 / Objectives of the Study --- p.2 / Research Methodology --- p.4 / Literature Review --- p.4 / Interview --- p.4 / Mail Survey --- p.4 / Chapter II. --- HONG KONG CLOTHING INDUSTRY / History --- p.6 / Current Role --- p.7 / Export Trends --- p.11 / By Value --- p.11 / By Market --- p.12 / By Type of Material --- p.13 / By Kind of Wear --- p.14 / By Category --- p.14 / Quota Restrictions --- p.15 / Chapter III. --- RESPONDING COMPANY PROFILE / By Company Characteristic --- p.20 / By Company Type --- p.20 / By Year of Establishment --- p.21 / By Employment Size --- p.22 / By Annual Sales Volume --- p.23 / By Clothing Category --- p.24 / By Market --- p.26 / Chapter IV. --- ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF EXISTING STRATEGIES / Strategy One: Establishing Foreign Subsidiaries --- p.28 / Strategy Two: Improving Design and Materials --- p.34 / Strategy Three: Upgrading Production Facilities --- p.41 / The Three Emerging Strategies by Company Scale --- p.43 / Chapter V. --- ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF FUTURE GROWTH / Diversification --- p.48 / Manufacturers' and Traders' Opinions of Future Growth --- p.51 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.54 / APPENDIX / BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Reprint of manuscript. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-125). / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 前言 --- p.2 / Chapter 一 --- 棉紡織手工業在中國的發展 --- p.4 / Chapter 二 --- 洋紗洋布入侵與棉紡織手工業的解體 --- p.18 / Chapter 三 --- 大生紗廠之籌款經過 --- p.50 / Chapter 四 --- 大生紗廠的成功擴張與失敗 --- p.76 / Chapter 五 --- 大生紗廠的組織與管理 --- p.88 / Chapter 六 --- 大生紗廠成敗的討論 --- p.101 / Chapter 七 --- 結論 --- p.115 / Chapter 附一 --- 大生紗廠大事年表 --- p.119 / Chapter 附二 --- 主要參考書目

Summary in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves 144-146.

by Ho Shui Leung, Paul, Lau Kun Che, Choi Yin Chau. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-128). / ABSTRACT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vii / PREFACE --- p.xii / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --- p.xiv / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- HONG KONG'S CLOTHING INDUSTRY --- p.1 / Historical development --- p.1 / Global Position --- p.2 / Domestic Position --- p.3 / Structure --- p.7 / Factory Classification --- p.10 / Number and Size of Establishment . --- p.10 / Labour --- p.12 / Market --- p.14 / Current Constraints --- p.16 / Increasing Costs --- p.16 / Labour Shortage --- p.16 / Increase Competition From Other Low-cost Countries --- p.17 / Pressure From Buyers --- p.18 / Chapter II. --- QUALITY IMPROVEMENT AS A STRATEGY TO KEEP COMPETITIVENESS --- p.20 / Total. Quality Management --- p.20 / Customer Focus --- p.21 / Identifying Your External Customer --- p.21 / Identifying Your Internal Customer --- p.23 / Listening To The Voice Of Customers --- p.24 / Achieve Zero Customer Defections . --- p.25 / Continuous Process Improvement --- p.25 / Improving Existing Production Process --- p.25 / Performance Measurement --- p.27 / Total Commitment --- p.27 / Leadership And Empowerment --- p.28 / Training And Education --- p.29 / Chapter III . --- PERFORMANCE & QUALITY ACHIEVEMENT --- p.30 / Postal Survey --- p.30 / Objective --- p.30 / Methodology --- p.31 / Company Demographics --- p.33 / Company Size --- p.34 / Turnover Rate --- p.34 / Company Sales --- p.34 / Year in Business --- p.34 / Employee Involved in Quality Improvement Activities --- p.35 / Overseas Establishmen --- p.35 / Company Information --- p.37 / Company Performance --- p.40 / Quality Performance --- p.44 / Financial Performance --- p.47 / Quality Improvement Techniques --- p.50 / Productivity Improvement Techniques --- p.73 / Further Analysis and Discussion --- p.85 / Factor Analysis --- p.85 / Kaiser-Meyer- Olkin Measure --- p.89 / Results of Factor Analysis --- p.94 / Chapter IV. --- COMPARISON WITH HONG KONG'S MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY --- p.96 / Quality Performance --- p.97 / Financial Performance --- p.99 / Other Quality And Financial Achievement . --- p.101 / Factor 1 --- p.102 / Factor 2 --- p.102 / Factor 3 --- p.103 / Factor 4 --- p.103 / Factor 5 --- p.104 / Factor 6 --- p.104 / Chapter V. --- FINDINGS IN FACTORY INTERVIEWS --- p.106 / Background of the Factory --- p.107 / Glorious Sun Group --- p.107 / Hinbase Limited --- p.108 / Quality Achievement --- p.108 / Informal Approach --- p.109 / Formal Approach --- p.111 / Quality Certification --- p.112 / Productivity Improvement --- p.114 / Traditional Cost Reduction --- p.114 / Industrial Engineering and Process Analysis --- p.116 / Market Pressure --- p.117 / Management Commitment --- p.118 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.119 / APPENDIX --- p.120 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.127

Summary in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves [115-119]

Lin Min Ying. / Summary in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: l. 80-81.

This thesis aims to challenge the conventional assumption about the irreversibility of the decline of the textile industry in developed countries. It is argued that the decline can be reversed if mature textile firms can break away from their traditional routines and practices and radically and continuously change their technologies, markets and organisational structure to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment. Using the European textile industry as a case study, this thesis shows that a number of European countries, including Germany and The Netherlands, have managed to bypass the maturity-trap -a phenomenon commonly found in large mature firms because of an inability to adapt to changing external conditions- through industrial reconfiguration from the 1960s onwards. The majority of the industry, however, has been in relative decline over the past decade as the market has become much more competitive and consequently made their old strategies obsolete. Under such circumstances there is an urgent need to turn the industry around. Learning from the failure of the Courtaulds (UK) and the success of Ten Cate (NL) and Freudenberg (DE), the thesis illustrates how the maturity-trap can take hold and how the process of de-maturity can be initiated at the firm level. The case study of Marzotto highlights how the danger of the maturity-trap is now no longer just a British phenomenon. This once highly successful firm is now in great danger of falling into the maturity-trap. The issue at stake is the long-term survival of the European textile industry and how rapidly its long-term competitiveness can be restored.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaves 78-79. / by William R. Brown. / M.S.

This dissertation uses the large shock to the British cotton textile industry in the 19th century, caused by the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), in order to address three long-running questions about technological progress and industry development. The cotton textile industry was a large and important sector in the British economy during the 19th century. The industry was entirely dependent on imported raw cotton, most of which came from the U.S. South prior to the Civil War. The onset of the war sharply reduced the supply of Southern cotton to the British market, causing a severe downturn in the industry. In response to the shock, cotton textile producers turned to other sources of supply, chiefly India, but also Egypt, Brazil and others, to help meet their raw cotton needs. But cotton from these alternative suppliers, and India in particular, was very different from the U.S. cotton that British producers were used to spinning. As a result, British cotton textile producers were faced with a number of new challenges. The first two chapters of this dissertation describe how the cotton textile industry developed new technology in order to deal with these challenges, and what this response can tell us about the process of innovation. Chapter three then investigates the impact of the recession on other industries in the British economy. This historical setting has a number of features which makes it a particularly good setting for investigating technological progress. First, the U.S. Civil War caused a shock which was both large and exogenous. The size of the shock ensures that the response will be large enough to clearly observe, while the exogenous nature of the shock means that it can be used as a natural experiment in order to uncover causal relationships. Second, the impact of the U.S. Civil War was largely industry-specific; while the impact of the war on the cotton textile industry was severe, most other sectors of the British economy were not directly impacted. This includes other textile industries based on wool, linen, and silk, which do not show any ill effects during the war. One advantage of this feature is that it allows me to control for other time-varying factors by comparing the cotton textile industry to these other similar industries. I will also be able to uncover evidence of inter-industry connections, since other industries will be affected primarily through their relationship with the cotton textile industry. Another feature of this shock is that, despite the magnitude, there was virtually no government intervention in the affected markets. This unique feature was due to the particularly strong free-market ideology that was dominant in Britain during this period. The first chapter investigates the theory of directed technical change. The leading theory of directed technical change, developed by Acemoglu (2002), offers two main predictions. First, when inputs are sufficiently substitutable, a change in relative input supplies will generate technical change directed towards the inputs which become more abundant. Second, if technical change is strongly directed towards the more abundant inputs, the relative price of these inputs will increase -- the strong induced-bias hypothesis. The chapter provides the first empirical test of these predictions. I extend the theory to a setting in which input quantities are endogenous and affected by international transport cost shocks, such as that caused by the war. Using detailed new patent data, I show that there was a burst of cotton textile innovation in Britain during the war directed towards taking advantage of one input -- Indian cotton -- which became relatively more abundant. Next, I show that the relative price of Indian cotton first declined and then rebounded, consistent with the strong induced-bias hypothesis. These results provide support for the theory. My extended model also predicts that technical change directed towards the more abundant input will be magnified by a higher elasticity of input supply. This may explain why inventors chose to focus on innovations for Indian cotton, rather than Brazilian or Egyptian cotton, since I find evidence that the elasticity of supply was higher for Indian cotton. In the second chapter, I look at whether the stock of available knowledge about a particular type of technology can influence the rate of innovation in that technology. The answer to this question has significant implications for how we think about technological progress and economic growth. This chapter provides a theory which describes how the stock of knowledge can influence the innovation rate, which I call path dependence in innovation. The theory suggests that path dependence in innovation may occur at multiple levels of aggregation, such as specific types of technologies within an industry. This motivates an empirical exercise in which I search for path dependence at multiple technology levels. I introduce an empirical methodology that addresses two potential sources of bias in generating evidence of path dependence in innovation by using a temporary observable shock to innovation rates. My results provide no evidence of path dependence in innovation for cotton textile technologies. However, I do find suggestive evidence of path dependence in innovation for specific subsets of technologies within the cotton textile industry. This illustrates the importance of looking at multiple levels of aggregation when studying path dependence in innovation. Chapter 3 provides causal evidence that inter-industry connections can influence the geographic location of economic activity. To do so, it compares the impact of the shock caused by the U.S. Civil War on towns in Lancashire County, the center of Britain's cotton textile industry, to towns in neighboring Yorkshire County, where wool textiles dominated. The results suggest that the shock reduced employment and employment growth in industries related to the cotton textile industry, in towns that were more severely impacted by the shock, relative to less affected towns. The impact still appears over two decades after the end of the U.S. Civil War. This suggests that temporary shocks, acting through inter-industry connections, can have long-term impacts on the distribution of industrial activity across locations. Each of the three chapters are entirely self-contained, so that a reader interested in only one of these topics need focus on only one chapter. As a result, each chapter contains an overview of the features of the empirical setting which are relevant for that chapter. There are significant overlaps between these descriptions. Also, chapters one and two are largely based on the same British patent data, though each chapter uses some parts of the data which are not used in the other.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration