Puesto de trabajo

already been addressed in our discussion of the cultural and structural characteristics of the industry. When asked to identify internal barriers for development or

innovation companies invariably focus on economic barriers. Aversion to economic risks and lack of economic resources are the factors mentioned, as opposed to, for example, lack of relevant internal competence.

In our innovation survey we asked firms for their reasons for engaging in innovation; the figure below shows the results from innovative firms in printing and publishing in Norway.

Figure 4. Percentages of firms citing the following factors are relatively or very important reasons for engaging in innovation. Printing and publishing. Innovative firms. Weighted shares. (N=73).

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Repl ace prod ucts bein g ph ased out Fulfi lling regu latio ns, st anda rds Red uce ener gy c onsu mptio n Red uce en viro nmen tal d amage Redu ce m ater ial c onsum ptio n Exte nd p rodu ct ra nge Open up ne w ma rket s or incr ease ma rket sha re Impr ovin g pr oduc t qua lity Imp rove pro duct ion f lexib ility Red uce l abo ur c osts

More than 80% of the firms see the reduction of production costs as the most important reason for engaging in innovation, followed by the need to improve production flexibility and product quality.

Only one interviewed company mentioned problems with attracting the required competences. All other companies interviewed claimed to have no problems recruiting new employees with the right qualifications. The qualifications and competences required varied a great deal from company to company. Some larger companies mentioned problems with recruiting employees with IT qualifications, although the problem here was essentially an economic one. As one interviewee answered: “we don’t have a tradition for paying the high salaries that employees in IT want – also, the culture and environment that they represent and come from is very different to that in printing and publishing. This is a further hindrance” (pers. comm. Pedersen, 1999).

Some larger companies cite cultural barriers as a reason for keeping the different production activities – design, pre-press, printing, electronic database development - separate in the organisation, arguing that the internal cultural differences are too great to create any synergies between the activities.

8.1 Organisational barriers

This problem may also be partly a result of the so-called tariff agreements that constitute certain operating rules for production in the sector. The tariff system means that an employee must have a profession-based letter of permission or license (fagbrev) to run certain machines and perform certain techniques in the production process. In countries like Sweden and Denmark such rules have been abolished in an attempt to encourage better integration of work-flows and improve cultural

integration between different production workers. In the future it might become important to examine the relationship in Norwegian companies between internal learning and development on the one hand, and the tariff system on the other, particularly in comparison to other Scandinavian companies.

As the integration of production and the expansion of individual companies’ products and services proceeds, strategic alliances between companies – particularly the smaller companies – will become more attractive. According to the sector organisations some signs already point in this direction, but the interviews we conducted indicate that only very loose co-operation occurs between companies in printing and publishing. Interviewees pointed to the structure of the industry in accounting for this. As companies are generally small and competing in a dense market, there is a tendency to be highly sensitive to competition. At the same time many companies are family-owned, and ‘emotional capital’ in this type of company can be another difficult obstacle. The few interviewed companies that had entered into strategic alliances seemed to have experienced considerable problems, particularly in overcoming social or cultural barriers.

Publishing and printing 33



equipment, material or software (53%). Very few firms have collaborated with the scientific community.

Functional, informal co-corporation appears to be characteristic of the industry, and this conclusion is shared by a thesis studying network co-operation in printing and publishing from 1996. The report concludes that one cannot speak of printing and publishing in Oslo as an “industrial district” or a locally embedded production network. The networks and co-operation that do exist are characterised as being informal, long-term, and falling somewhere between co-operation and competition. This picture was supported by interviews, which showed that most companies had informal arrangements with other companies. None of these relationships seemed to be based on anything other than occasional communication and joint activity; companies might do favours for each other, or make price agreements from time to time. As noted above, this type of relationship between printing and publishing companies is the result of the structural characteristics of the industry; small companies compete in a dense local market, and this creates basic barriers to co- operation, hindering the transfer of core knowledge and the pooling of strategic concerns between companies in the industry.