Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
or developing a new technology, product, industry, or institution (and again, we may
add, a location for such an activity). In David's and Arthur's work the search process is
portrayed as largely undirected, and decisions mainly contingent. There may be several
alternative opportunities being explored at this stage. A 'critical juncture' then occurs -
in David's accounts this is usually a 'historical accident' or 'random event' - that results
in one particular development opportunity or decision being 'selected' or preferred over
alternatives, a process that David likens to the idea of 'bifurcation' used in complexity
theory. This opportunity or development then begins to attract other actors, or acquires
market inl uence, and a critical mass around this activity begins to build up and a devel-
opment path is formed. Once this critical mass achieves a certain size or momentum, the
path gets 'locked-in', and a third phase of cumulative and self-reinforcing development
along this path ensues.
Sydow et al. criticise the basic David path-dependent model on several grounds. For
example, they argue that the assumption that path creation is a random event or 'accident
of history' ignores the fact that the emergence of a new technology, a new product, or
a new organisation, is often the outcome of purposive behaviour and directed decision-
making by economic agents (see also Garud and Karnøe, 2001; Martin and Sunley, 2006).
Further, they suggest the model is incomplete in the sense that it says nothing about how
paths 'de-lock', break up and dissolve. These are obviously important aspects of the path
dependence idea, and clearly crucial to its relevance as an evolutionary concept. While it
is true that David tends to see the emergence of a path in terms of some 'random event'
or 'historical accident', it is not strictly true that he says nothing about how a path ends.
In fact he has a very specii c view on this, namely that the break-up and dissolution of
a technological, industrial or institutional trajectory is brought about by an 'external
shock' of some sort, which then destabilises the system and opens up opportunities for a
new path to emerge. Thus, the basic path dependence model actually posits four stages of
the development of a technological, industrial or institutional trajectory: pre-formation,
path creation, path lock-in, and path dissolution (see Figure 3.1).
There are two main ways in which economic geographers have used a basic path
dependence model of this sort: to explain the evolution of a particular industry, tech-
nology or institution either in a
given
location (region, city), or
across
locations. In the
former case, interest has focused on identifying the initial locally 'contingent' factors or
stimuli responsible for the emergence of the industry, technology or institution (the crea-
tion of the path) in the area in question, and on the types of self-reinforcing mechanism
and co-evolutionary processes that explain its subsequent path-dependent development.
In particular, attention is often directed to the role of local 'network externalities' (to
use David's terminology) or 'increasing returns' (to use Arthur's). In some applications,
particularly in relation to high-tech regions, the local embedding of such network exter-
nalities and increasing returns is viewed as key to innovative and competitive success. In
such cases, 'lock-in' is seen as a positive process. In other applications, however, typically
older industrial regions, 'lock-in' is seen as a negative feature, whereby a region or local-
ity becomes over-reliant on, or dominated by, a particular self-reinforcing industrial-
technological path that renders the regional or local economy increasingly structurally
and technologically rigid, restricting thereby its capacity to adapt to changing competi-
tive forces ('the weakness of strong ties' argument). In this version the basic model is often
used to argue that the path-dependent overspecialisation of regions is likely to make them
