An Inquiry into the Rapid Growth of the Garment Industry in Bangladesh
By K. Mottaleb, Tetsushi Sonobe. Economic development and cultural change, 2011
149 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The export-oriented garment industry in Bangladesh has grown rapidly for the last 3 decades and now ranks among the largest garment exporters in the world. While its early success is attributed to the initial technology transfer from South Korea, such a one-time infusion of knowledge alone is insufficient to explain the sustained growth for 3 decades. This article uses primary data collected from knitwear manufacturers and garment traders to explore the process of the continuous learning of advanced skills and know-how. It finds, among other things, that the high profitability of garment manufacturing due to the initial infusion of specific human capital attracted a number of highly educated entrepreneurs to the industry, that the division of labor between manufacturers and traders has facilitated the expansion of the industry, and that enterprise growth has lasted long because of the continuous learning from abroad by the highly educated entrepreneurs.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b02a669f9540d024ada870c360fb116825a8243a
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Citations in the corpus
- Growth Identification and Facilitation: The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change (2010, unknown): “” It is found that local garment plants mushroomed in Bangladesh, and most of them could be traced back to that first Korean firm (Mottaleb and Sonobe 2009; Rhee, 1990; Rhee and Belot 1990).”
- How important is GVC participation to export upgrading?* (2021, background): “A case study of the textile and garment industry in Bangladesh suggested that increasing the share or content of foreign intermediate inputs can be an essential source of increased productivity and upgrading (Mottaleb & Sonobe, 2011).”