知識創造と産業集積 : マスケル&マルムベルイ説の批判的検討

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Many scholars in European and American economic geography stress the role of spatial proximity in knowledge creation. This opinion is typically represented by Maskell and Malmberg. The purpose of this paper is to review the logic of their papers in European Urban and Regional Studies, 6, 1999, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 23, 1999, and Environment and Planning, Series A, 34, 2002. The paper puts forward a hypothesis on the important factors for knowledge creation in a region of industrial clustering.According to Maskell and Malmberg, spatial proximity is necessary for knowledge creation, since tacit knowledge is more important for competitive advantage in the globalizing market than coded knowledge. Enterprises can obtain competitive advantage only on the basis of local resources such as tacit knowledge. Ubiquitous factors such as coded knowledge cannot help enterprises become more globally competitive. Tacit knowledge is transferable only among economic actors who share norms and values in a local milieu.There are some weak points in the logic of the importance of spatial proximity. For example, Maskell and Malmberg do not distinguish knowledge from information. The present author introduces the ideas of Hodgson (1988), Meusburger (2000) and Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) in order to clarify the definition and meaning of knowledge as well as of information. As a result, the present author concludes that knowledge is power to do something. Knowledge first takes a tacit form. This tacit form is to be socialized among actors who undertake something cooperatively. It becomes externalized and coded as the actors discuss their actions. Coded knowledge is to be combined with the other one, and then new coded knowledge is created. One must practice this new coded knowledge. If it is successful, the new coded knowledge is internalized in the bodies of some actors, and becomes new tacit knowledge. Then this process repeats itself. Knowledge creation is a complete spiral transformation process between tacit knowledge and the coded one.On the other hand, information does not mean power to do something. Tacit knowledge as well as coded knowledge can be information for its passive receiver. If this receiver cannot transform this information to the power of practice, it remains only information. Certainly information and coded knowledge can circulate all over the world. However, every actor cannot always transform information into the power of practice. It depends upon the level of knowledge or power of practice which the concerned actor already possesses. Therefore, even coded knowledge is not ubiquitous. Tacit knowledge is transferable from one place to another because an actor with it can move over space. It is possible to spill it over from one local region to another, even if it takes a longer time than its circulation in the local milieu.Spatial proximity can give actors not the inevitability but the possibility of knowledge creation. In order to create knowledge, it is important to be open not only to actors within a local milieu, but also to the outside world. In order to be innovative and competitive, one should not depend solely on tacit knowledge circulated only within a local milieu. On the contrary, one should always create knowledge spirally from tacit through coded to a new tacit one by means of gathering information from all over the world. Whether a region of industrial clustering can possess a competitive advantage or not, depends not upon the individual local milieu, but upon the openness to actors in the regions outside that local milieu.
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知識創造と産業集積 : マスケル&マルムベルイ説の批判的検討

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