Lean and Mean: Why Large Corporations Will Continue to Dominate the Global Economy

Is big business on its way out? Are small firms better at generating new jobs and spurring technological innovation? In this book, the author argues that, contrary to pervailing wisdom, the big firm is not only alive and well but is becoming more flexible and efficient. He makes the case that although smaller companies have an important role to play, long term economic growth lies ultimately where is always has: with the country's largest most resourceful global companies.; Harrison argues that rather than romantisizing the small-firm led economic growth and development, there are more significant issues to be dealt with by government, business, and labour policymakers at the turn of the millenium. These include: how to promote the relationship of local businesses to the global networked economy; how to encourage innovative management behaviour without simultaneously adding to under employment, insecurity, and working poverty; and how to regulate businesses whose organizational boundaries are becoming increasingly fuzzy.

Table of Contents:
Foreword, Robert Kuttner I. Overview 1. Big Firms, Small Firms, Network Firms II. Reassessing the Idea that Small Firms Are the Economic Development Drivers 2. The Myth of Small Firms as Job Generators 3. Are Small Firms the Technology Leaders? 4. The Evolution (and Devolution?) of the Italian Industrial Districts 5. Is Silicon Valley an Industrial District? III. The Emerging System of Globally Networked Production 6. The Emergence of Large Firm-Led Production Networks 7. Large Firm-Centered Networked Production Systems in Japan and Europe 8. Interfirm Production Networks in the United States 9. The Dark Side of Flexible Production IV. Rethinking Economic Development Policy 10. Economic Development Policy in a World of Lean and Mean Production 11. Postscript: Reassessing Lean and Mean on the Eve of the New Millennium

About the Author :
Bennett Harrison, The New School for Social Research, New York

Review :
Lean and Mean gives us the new world economy as it really is an economy that is still dominated by big business, in which the life of the small remains nasty, brutish, and short....This is a serious book. - New York Times Book Review Challenges so many old and new orthodoxies that sometimes the reader is left breathless....Lean and Mean is a terrific book, and we need to absorb its insights and build on them. - Contemporary Sociology