THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS IN JAPANESE MANUFACTURING

The objective of this paper is to explore the nature and development o f nonmaterial networks within establishments across the entire manufac turing sector in Japan. We generate;coproduction indexes for different commodities in the Japanese economy, which enable us to recognize thr ee types of nonmaterial linkages: technical, market and vertical. Pred ictably, the level of nonmaterial linkages is greater in more knowledg e intensive industries. We observe that the evolution of these network s in the decade 1975-85 among the different manufacturing sectors para llels the evolution of the knowledge levels in the Japanese labor forc e towards higher levels of embodied knowledge.