Swedish Manufacturing Industry is said to be technologically and commercially in good shape. While Swedish wage levels were higher than in all industrial countries in the mid-70s, wages - expressed in international currencies - have now dropped to a mid-position, and real rates of return are...

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Market competition is central to innovative activity, the diffusion process and macro-economic productivity growth. Productivity growth at all levels comes about through institutional reconfiguration in response to the ongoing market process. Stable and sustained long-term growth in output...

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Results from empirical studies of firm behavior are synthesized into, a theory of the firm as a competent team. I demonstrate the existence of a tacit organizational competence exercising a leverage on the productivities of all other factors through selecting and allocating competent people,...

The modern manufacturing firm competes with product quality improvements rather than cost efficient production of simpler products. R&D spending, marketing, availability of spare parts and service facilities, customs designs, etc. embody the product quality enhancing process, requiring...

This paper presents statistical evidence on (1) the importance of "soft" capital spending items like marketing and R&D investments, and (2) the dominant service content of production in the modern manufacturing firm. It pictures the firm as a dominantly information processing entity that has...