Playing by the rules: Institutional foundations of success and failure in the Taiwanese IT industry

This paper examines the different growth trajectories of the personal compu ter, hard disc drive, and software sectors in Taiwan since the 1980s. Takin g an institutionalist perspective, we emphasize the importance of instituti onalized rules of the game in shaping economic behavior within social syste ms. We explain success and failure in the three sectors according to differ ent degrees of Pt between the rules of the Taiwanese national system of pro duction and the rules of the respective technology systems. Implications fo r business and government policy are drawn out. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science I nc. All rights reserved.