Trading companies in Taiwan's fashion shoe networks

The Taiwanese export fashion shoe networks are composed of independent producers, suppliers, subcontractors, and trading companies. This paper explores the formation and governance of such networks, the underlying social relationships among participants, and the transformation of the networks as Taiwanese shoe companies moved across the Taiwan Straits to southern China in the late 1980s. The author argues for the key role of the trading companies in the work of the network. Trading companies function not only as marketing agents but also as information centers and coordinators of the highly decentralized network to achieve collective scale and scope economies among small-sized shoe companies. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.