Technological Learning In The Process Of Industrialization In Malaysia And Technological Progress

Moving from Solow-Swan model of neoclassical school to New growth theory with endogenous technological change as its core, economists have come to explore the fundamental source of long-term economic growth - technical progress, based on theoretical breakthrough as well as empirical evidence. So far technology development has become an appealing and complicated topic in modern economic growth theory. Correspondingly, the debates on East-Asia miracle in the 1990s, especially after Asian financial crisis, have inspired extensive interests in the academic circle regarding the contribution of technical progress to the sustained East-Asia economic growth as well as innovation mechanism in this area. As a typical case of technology development in Southeast Asia, Malaysia's route to technological learning and development, relying on MNCs, varies from the earlier approach of South Korea and Taiwan's employing externalized technological learning. Meanwhile, internalized learning approach is also adopted by many developing countries in the era of globalization. Therefore, it is worthwhile to review the process of technology development in Malaysia's industrialization.This dissertation with frame of national innovation system (NIS), assimilating the evolutionary viewpoints, analyzes the interaction among technology development, economic performance and institutional change in Malaysia's rapid industrialization process over the last decade. The research is constituted of four major aspects, i.e., MNCs, local SMIs, human resource and S&T management organization. Efforts have been made to broaden the liner analysis of traditional research in terms ofR&D or technology policy. It is argued that Malaysia has taken advantages of low labor cost and stable political and economic environment to merge into international multi production and technology network by the means of inflowing MNCs and export-led strategy in the past rapid industrialization era, this strategy has successfully created the opportunity of technological learning; However, restricted by the institutional failure in its innovation system, it's evaluated that Malaysia's overall development of technological capability lags behind its industrial growth. In conclusion, the case of Malaysia shows that there exists unbalanced relationship between industrial take-off and technology development for late comers.