Paola Perez-Aleman

Learning, Adjustment and Economic Development: Transforming Firms, The State and Associations in Chile

This article views learning processes as key to successful economic adjustment. It discusses results of research conducted in Chile, focused on the agroindustry and footwear sectors. It identifies specific problems that large and small firms face to upgrade production, and stresses the limits of focusing exclusively on market reforms for achieving growth. The article discusses how institutions reshape to facilitate learning and improve performance in Chile, particularly the relations between firms; the reorientation of trade associations; and the states role as facilitator of collective learning processes.

Collective Learning in Global Diffusion: Spreading Quality Standards in a Developing Country Cluster

This research analyzes how foreign organizational practices diffuse among indigenous enterprises in a developing economy. It highlights the collective knowledge-building process as central for understanding diffusion. Based on a longitudinal case study of a cluster of dairy producers in Nicaragua, a representative low-income country, it looks at cross-border diffusion in conditions that differ significantly from advanced economies. The current literature that highlights institutional pressures driving global spread of practices has limits for capturing a significant dynamic caused by increased integration of markets and production. By focusing on production organization and practices in a late developing context, this paper explains the intertwined process of spreading new standards and changing existing local practices by elaborating the relationship among building collective capabilities, learning, and standards diffusion. This study enriches current views on institutional effects and adds to the practice-based literature, as well as to the work on developing economy firms in organizational research.

Global standards and local knowledge building: Upgrading small producers in developing countries

Local knowledge building is a crucial factor for upgrading small producers and improving their market competitiveness and livelihoods. The rise of global standards affecting food safety and environmental sustainability in agriculture sparks debates on the impact on smallholders in developing countries. This article presents a perspective on the links of international standards to knowledge and institution building for developing the capabilities of small producers. Interacting with global practices, indigenous private and public actors create local institutions to develop capabilities for product and process innovations that contribute to economic development and enhance food security. Local innovation depends on collective strategic efforts through increasing networks among small producers and other organizations, including firms, nongovernmental organizations, and government, that foster knowledge circulation and bring diverse resources and support to build local capabilities.

A Learning-Centered View of Business Associations: Building Business-Government Relations for Development

The problems of rent seeking and state captured by business associations have been prominent among the concerns of economic development theory. This paper argues that firms and the state can make possible the building of new institutions that foster improvements in economic performance through arrangements that emphasize goal setting, problem solving, and continual evaluation of progress toward defined goals. The paper reviews key ideas on the learning-centered approach and builds on them to analyze the kinds of governmentbusiness relations that contribute to economic development. It uses case study material based on Chiles agro-industry business association FEPACH. It illustrates how innovative state policy coupled with private firms efforts led to the discovery of group-based coordination that fostered rapid diffusion of new technology and production organization among Chilean enterprises. This work discusses the institutional reshaping of the business association and businessstate relations to encourage learning and advance a process of development.

Regulation in the Process of Building Capabilities Strengthening Competitiveness While Improving Food Safety and Environmental Sustainability in Nicaragua

To understand how regulation influences competitiveness and upgrading processes, this article focuses on the organizational changes involved in “rewarding regulation.” Through a qualitative study of two clusters in the agrifood industry in Nicaragua, it analyzes two types of regulation and their interaction with small producers’ production organizations: food safety and environmental sustainability. The analysis shows that regulation plays a crucial role in fostering changes in organizational practices and routines. This occurs when local organizations build new knowledge and skills to upgrade products and production processes, while developing new connections among producers and between them to other private and public actors that support economic development. “Rewarding regulation” is part of a process of learning and creating networks that help build local know-how and generate supportive collective resources.

TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCE REGIMES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: MULTINATIONALS, STATES AND NGOs AS POLITICAL ACTORS

A presentation of the forum about the interaction between states, companies, social movements and transnational governance and its implications.