ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the accumulated body of empirical evidence around adjustment strategies in labour-intensive industries (LII). One of the noteworthy features of contemporary economic change involves the emergence of growth pattems resting squarely upon the global diffusion of production of LII. There is widespread agreement among researchers as well as policy-makers that product innovation is one of the main means of enhancing long-term enterprise competitiveness in LII. A number of competing explanations have emerged regarding spatial enterprise strategies. These could be broadly clustered in two groupings: the first stresses the importance of locality, and enterprise embeddedness as a source of competitive advantage. Functional upgrading has emerged or so as a key element of enterprise adjustment in LII. It is a strategy often identified with the Global Commodity Chain approach. Technological change constitutes an element of process-focused strategy that has not often received sufficient attention in empirical literature on enterprise adjustment in LII.
