SAGE DOCTRINE, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND LABOR - MANAGEMENT RELATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY TAIWAN

摘要

Within just four decades Taiwan was able to transform itself from a poor and backward economy into a high income, newly-industrialized economy. Taiwan's outstanding economic performance during this period prompted the World Bank and other international organizations to refer to this transformation as the "Taiwan miracle," and other developing countries have been encouraged to learn from Taiwan's experience. Harmonious and stable labor-management relations was - one of the major factors contributed to this successful development because they facilitated the inflow of a large amount of direct foreign investment (DFI) and therefore provided the island with the capital and appropriate advanced technologies that were urgently needed, and generated a large number of employment opportunities. In this paper, we use the concept of social capital to explain the causes of the harmonious labor-management relations in the past, and discuss the possible future of Taiwan's labor-management relations.