An application of the flexible specialisation methodology to the furniture industry in the Western Cape

The primary aim of this paper is to attempt to apply the flexible specialisation (FS) methodology to the furniture industry in the Western Cape. As described in detail in the following section, the gains from employing this approach include "the conceptualisation of industrialisation as a locally embedded process, and the focus on network and on technological capability as essential elements in this process" (Aeroe, 1992:16). A positive approach is then used to assess which aspects of the Western Cape furniture industry (if any) are similar to the industrial organisational structure which has been termed the small firm variant of FS. The fieldwork for the empirical part of the case study was carried out on a sample of 20 furniture manufacturing concerns drawn from three clusters of furniture enterprises in Epping, Lansdowne and Blackheath. The criterion for the selection of these research areas was the existence of a critical mass of sectorally concentrated firms agglomerated within a geographically compact area. A key objective was to attempt to isolate the influence of the variable "locality" on other variables such as the extent of cooperation, firm performance and strategies and supplier relations, inter alia. Finally the normative implications of this variant are examined. Do features in the Western Cape industrial landscape exist which suggest the potential for development of regional industrial clusters along FS lines? In order to conduct a case study broadly within the FS framework, it is necessary to first review the literature and extract testable hypotheses. Firstly the general literature on the FS small firm variant is reviewed. Then a survey of FS case studies of the furniture/woodworking sector is presented. The next phase is a detailed perspective on the South African furniture industry given as a background to the empirical study which follows.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Economics

Year dc:date.issued

1995

Author dc:creator

• Ajam, Tania

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17472

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/17472