ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Taiwan's industrialization can be characterized more accurately as a form of "society-led" development. The organization and economic dynamics of this sector can best be understood by recognizing the owners' connection to Taiwan's social organization—to the normative relationships, networks, organizations, and institutions that constitute Taiwan's society. It is this extra-state social organization that creates Taiwan's "market culture", a symbolically dense, culturally specific environment in which economic decisions and activities are embedded. The existing social and economic organizations within a society influence the state's economic planners as much as, and likely more than, the state's planners shape that society's economic organizations. To demonstrate the significance of society's influence on the process of economic development, it is important to understand how Taiwan's economy is organized. The chapter shows that the institutional patterns of Chinese society, particularly the dynamics of relationships among families and friends, shape Taiwan's market culture, which in turn shapes the very organization of the economy itself.
