Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the Watch Industry, 1795-2000 [Hardcover]

Amy K. Glasmeier (Author), Amy Glasmeier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2000 | ISBN-10: 1572305894 | ISBN-13: 978-1572305892 | Edition: 1

Since the large-scale manufacture of personal timepieces began, industry leadership has shifted among widely disparate locations, production systems and cultures. This book presents a richly textured historical study of the quest for supremacy in the manufacture of watches - from the cottage industries of Britain, to the pre-eminence of Switzerland, and later, the United States, to the high-tech plants of Japan and the sweatshops of Hong Kong.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An original and penetrating study of the evolution of the global watch industry. Glasmeier takes us from the Swiss watch industry to the world of electronics in the last years of the 20th century. She has created a remarkable story of an industry and its regions." --Gordon L. Clark, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

"Amy Glasmeier has written an excellent historical synthesis of the institutional and organizational conditions that have shaped industrial development and international competition in the watch industry over the past two centuries. This book is an important addition to a small but growing number of industry case studies that show how the same social forces that supported national industrial leadership in the past can inhibit responses to international competitive challenges. Glasmeier has provided a thought-provoking study of both the sources of institutional inertia and the dynamics of industrial change." --William Lazonick, Euro-Asia Research Centre, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France

"This book takes on all of the big questions in industrial history and geography. Along the way, it yields important insights into how knowledge is produced and contested within specific industrial cultures; how market 'signals' are received and understood, depending on how they are transmitted and by whom; and the thousand things that can go right or wrong in an industry--with immense consequences for people and the places in which they live." --Erica Schoenberger, Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University

From the Author

The recently completed book, Manufacturing Time: The Rise and Fall of Watch Industries and Regions Around the Globe, chronicles 250 years of industrial history of the competition for global supremacy in the world watch industry. The book integrates the effect of international economic downturns, military encounters, and the formation of national policies to cope with externally induced change. Glasmeier examines the integration of varying spatial scales from the effect of trade policy on international competition to the influence of national military postures on the production behavior and strategy of firms. From the microeconomic perspective, she examines how firms’ choices to pursue specific technological strategies and trajectories influence systemic industrial change. By examining the development of an industry across five countries and cultures, she identifies how corporate identities are formed and how they are influenced by and help to shape social norms.

She further shows how different industrial cultures with different strategic learning capabilities facilitate or thwart the pursuit of technological change. Glasmeier demonstrates how national technomilitary ideology influences technology adoption of a nation’s industries. She enumerates how technology lock-in and path dependency intersect with exogenous forces of economic change to produce the contemporary economic, technological, and corporate landscapes

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 311 pages
• Publisher: Guilford Press; 1 edition (August 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572305894
• ISBN-13: 978-1572305892
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,550,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Manufacturing Time a disappointment for afficianados, June 20, 2001

By 

Jon Weber (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the Watch Industry, 1795-2000 (Hardcover)

Any of us who love horology and want to learn more will be very disappointed by this book.

It is very broadly based with virtually no supporting technical detail and numerous techical errors.

For example it states that a pin lever watch has fewer moving parts than a jeweled lever...

She freqeuently refered to Landes book but he in addition to being a respected academic is an enthusuastic collector.

...This book has no grabbing technical detail, not even enough to justify the sweeping economic statements she makes.

To her credit she pointed out some trends and aspects of national markets I had not understood but it is tough going even for someone already deeply interested in this subject.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, July 8, 2007

By 

Richard H. Wood "Timenut" (Reno) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the Watch Industry, 1795-2000 (Hardcover)

Excellent book if you are interested in the economic history of the watch industry over the last 200 years. I found it informative and readable.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two centuries of regional evolution in watch manufacture, August 12, 2001

By 

M. Harrold (Masachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the Watch Industry, 1795-2000 (Hardcover)

Related to the authors previous work, Manufacturing Time reviews economic history and regional development for an industry with over 300 years of change.

The book focuses on shifting supplier trends in the last two centuries of consumer watch making, an obviously mature industry that will continue in some form. Various nations have fared well while they have held some technical or popular advantage, but have had trouble responding to industry internal and external forces that change the game. The book explores how players, who were once swift and strong winners, become slow and ponderous losers, dragging down entire economic communities. Demonstrated life cycles within watch manufacturing are instructive regarding general business management, industrial organization and policy.