Documents furniture industry 9 results

"This study seeks to go beneath the generalizations that constitute characterizations of national economies in order to examine local and sectoral diversity _ in particular, forms of capitalist organization at the level of localized sectors. It reports on the findings of research based on detailed case histories of local economies in four different types of production: modernized craft manufacturing (furniture), mass production (motor vehicles), high-technology production (biopharmaceuticals) and high-tech services (television film-making). In each case a local economy in Germany (usually seen counter-factually as an example of a particularly national system) was compared with one elsewhere in Europe: respectively, southern Sweden, Hungary (compared with eastern Germany) and the UK (for two studies). In the analysis, companies act rationally in response to sector-specific challenges, being partly bound by the existing institutional framework that they encounter, but partly acting to alter it. Two possibilities are distinguished and found in the cases. In the first (structurally conservative) case, arrangements of governance in the national innovation and production system prove to be beneficial for the companies and their aim to stand up to international competition. Insofar as national institutions help companies to deal with competition on their markets, they will probably try to preserve these arrangements. In the second (innovative) case, companies turn away from the national context and develop their own local governance structure. If the national institutional structure is seen as not adequate or ‘non-fitting' to deal with sectorally specific terms of competition, then the internal and external coordination of companies _ in reaction to challenges posed by the market _ is likely to deviate from the national structure. In some instances evidence of ‘creative incoherence', where local deviation from the national model provides a creative impulse, is found. "

"Mit Bezug auf die vergleichende Forschung über die nationalen Varianten des Kapitalismus werden in diesem Buch regionale Wirtschaftscluster in Deutschland und in anderen europäischen Ländern untersucht. Dabei wird die These verfolgt, dass die Governance solcher Wirtschaftscluster nicht mit der Governance ihres jeweiligen nationalen Umfeldes übereinstimmen muss. Das Augenmerk richtet sich auf Inkohärenzen, also von dem nationalen Kontext abweichende institutionelle Besonderheiten der regionalen Wirtschaftscluster, beispielsweise in der Corporate Governance, in der Unternehmensfinanzierung, in der beruflichen Bildung oder bei den industriellen Beziehungen. Sofern sich solche Inkohärenzen regionaler Wirtschaftscluster auch noch mit spezifischen Stärken im europäischen oder globalen Wettbewerb verbinden lassen, wird von „produktiven Inkohärenzen“ gesprochen. Untersucht werden regionale Wirtschaftscluster der Film- und Fernsehproduktion (Köln und London), der Biotechnologie (München und Cambridge), der Möbelindustrie (in Ostwestfalen-Lippe und Südschweden) und der Automobilproduktion (Zwickau in Ostdeutschland und Györ in Ungarn)."

"Describes the design and findings of a pooled re-analysis of epidemiological studies investigating carcinogenicity in workers exposed to wood dust. The analysis included a large number of studies whose results have not been fully explored due to limitations, mainly linked to small size, inherent in each study. By pooling these studies, the IARC analysis allowed a more powerful interpretation of previously published case-control studies of sino-nasal cancer and cohort studies of workers in wood-related industries. The result is the largest data set ever assembled to examine the relationship between exposure to wood dust and human cancer. Although exposure to wood dust has long been associated with a very high excess of sino-nasal cancer, the IARC analysis aimed to answer several remaining questions concerning the possible excess risk of cancer at other sites, the level of wood dust exposure needed to cause cancer, the differences between exposure to dust from soft- and hardwood, and the reasons for the wide range of relative risks for sino-nasal cancer and the results observed for other cancers. A uniform exposure assessment strategy was applied in order to classify study subjects according to levels of exposure. The opening chapters explain the methodology of the pooled re-analysis and provide a detailed description for each of the twelve case-control studies of sino-nasal cancer and five cohorts of workers in wood-related industries. In addition to the predicted excess of sino-nasal cancer, the analysis found an excess of nasopharyngeal cancer and lymphatic and haematopoietic cancer, particularly multiple myeloma. No evidence was found for an excess risk of deaths from lung cancer."