IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rripxx/v19y2012i1p140-168.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transitioning from fast-follower to innovator: The institutional foundations of the Korean telecommunications sector

Author

Listed:
  • Sung-Young Kim

Abstract

In a world of rapid technological change and increasing interdependence between national and global networks, what institutions are necessary to facilitate the execution of a developmental project? An increasingly popular view expects the East Asian model of development to be ill-equipped to deal with the challenges involved in the information economy while the institutions of a ‘developmental network state’ are argued to be of greater utility. This paper tests this view in light of a dramatic shift in the business strategy of Korean firms in the telecommunications sector in the early years of the twenty-first century. I argue that core features of the Korean model have been recombined in creative and unanticipated ways to meet the twin challenges of economic openness and knowledge-based industrialisation. The argument is developed through an examination of the Korean government's promotion of a novel Korean-developed mobile broadcasting standard. I identify and trace the emergence of the institutional conditions which facilitated the rise of new and innovative forms of state-industry collaboration. The findings have implications for two outstanding issues in the developmental state literature: the role of former developmental states after liberalisation and the type of institutions useful beyond the catch-up process.

Suggested Citation

  • Sung-Young Kim, 2012. "Transitioning from fast-follower to innovator: The institutional foundations of the Korean telecommunications sector," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 140-168.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:140-168
    DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.503125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.503125
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09692290.2010.503125?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seung-Ho Kwon & Joseph Kim, 2013. "From censorship to active support: The Korean state and Korea’s cultural industries," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 24(4), pages 517-532, December.
    2. Douglas R Gress, 2015. "Knowledge bases, regional innovation systems, and Korea's solar PV industry," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1432-1449, December.
    3. Larson, James F. & Park, Jaemin, 2014. "From developmental to network state: Government restructuring and ICT-led innovation in Korea," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 344-359.
    4. Rajiv Kumar, 2023. "Taking the developmental state seriously: Why South Korea outperformed neoliberal regulatory states in rapid coronavirus disease 2019 vaccinations and saving lives," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 26(4), pages 319-340, December.
    5. Marian Negoita, 2014. "Globalization, state, and innovation: An appraisal of networked industrial policy," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 371-393, September.
    6. Jisung Park & Seongsu Kim, 2015. "The differentiating effects of workforce aging on exploitative and exploratory innovation: The moderating role of workforce diversity," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 481-503, June.
    7. David B. Audretsch & Antje Fiedler, 2023. "Does the entrepreneurial state crowd out entrepreneurship?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 573-589, February.
    8. Jonek Kowalska, Izabela, 2015. "Challenges for long-term industry restructuring in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin: What has Polish coal mining achieved and failed from a twenty-year perspective?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 135-149.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:140-168. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rrip20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.