IDS Kaplinsky

By Raphie Kaplinsky

Robin moved from the London Business School to the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University in 1972, a post he held until 1993. Between 1982 and 1986 he was seconded to the Greater London Council as Director of Employment and Industry. His contribution to the IDS and Development Studies and Development Policy spanned four overlapping sets of activities.

First, following the trajectory of his work at the London Business School (1), Robin brought to prominence the growing internationalisation of capital (2) and its impact on developing economies. Until the early 1970s the operations of transnational companies (TNCs) in the developing world had largely been limited to the extraction of natural resources and to meeting demand in local markets (3). Robin, in discussion with colleagues at the IDS such as Gerry Helleiner argued that falling productivity and profitability in high income economies provided the incentive for transnational capital to exploit the enormous reservoir of unskilled labour in the developing world, heralding the onset of export oriented industrialisation which grew rapidly during the 1970s and (with China’s entry into the global economy) the 1980s (4). In collaboration with Constantine Vaitsos, and building on his prior work at the London Business school on the extraction of North Sea oil (5), Robin highlighted the scale and significance of transfer pricing as a mechanism for expropriating surplus value from low income economies (6). His collaboration with UNCTAD in 1975-1976 highlighted the extent to which the costs of technology transfer were underestimated in official statistics on trade and investment flows. Proposals for limiting transfer pricing were also developed in collaboration with Norman Girvan at the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations in 1981 (7).

Second, on his return from his secondment to the Greater London Council in 1986, Robin turned his attention to Industrial Policy. Here he made a major input into development policy and discourse. This was based on his interactions with French Marxist theorists such as Lipietz and Boyer (elaborating the concept of post-Fordism) and American scholars Piore and Sabel who focused on the transition from mass production to flexible specialisation. Robin developed these ideas further and had a major impact on the development of Industrial Policy through a multi-year programme between 1987 and 1990 supporting the development of industrial policy in Cyprus (8). This pioneering development of industrial policy in Cyprus was extended to Jamaica, where Robin worked closely with JAMPRO (9), then to Honduras (10), then the development of an industrial policy for post-Apartheid South Africa (11), Eastern Europe (12) and for other developing countries (13).

Robin’s pioneering contributions to the internationalisation of capital highlighted the role which this played on reducing the bargaining power of labour. (He memorably electrified his students with the phrase ‘the international law of value knocking at the door’). Thus, an industrial policy which sought to insert producers into the circuit of global mass production was unlikely to provide sustainable incomes. By contrast, an industrial strategy promoting flexible specialisation would allow producers to participate in niche markets in which competition was less intense. But, Robin agued, this required the up-skilling of the labour force, new labour processes and (in the case of small and medium sized firms such as those in Cyprus and the Caribbean) cooperation to achieve the collective efficiency which had characterised successful growth in the consorzia in the Third Italy (14). 

Third, drawing on his experience in the GLC and in Cyprus, in the years prior to leaving the IDS, Robin began to explore the importance of municipalism and participatory governance (15). Drawing on his reformulation of industrial policy, he offered a critique of ‘mechanical’ closed-system public administration structures which were hierarchical, built around segmented skills and which failed to contingently reflect context. He contrasted this with ‘organic’, learning administrative structures which reflected the changes in organisation and labour processes which were being developed in the corporate sector. He memorably combined this with his teaching of graduate students in a lived-experience of active learning in the analysis of waste management in Harlow, Essex. London. This interaction with students and his contribution to teaching technique reflected the fourth of Robin’s distinctive contributions to the IDS (at the time, the largest development research institute in the world).

Robin was an inspiring facilitator of learning. When he arrived at the IDS the distinctive teaching style involved set-piece lectures, often of more than two hours duration, generally delivered from a podium by men to classes of around 25 students in which female students generally outnumbered male students. Coming from the more interactive teaching process at the LBS, Robin was aghast. He pointed out that the maximum period of listener concentration was between 25 and 35 minutes. Moreover, he also challenged didactic pedagogy, introducing interactive learning and one-to-one tutorials. Robin was not alone in transforming the IDS into a leading progressive teaching institution, but he played a critical role in this transformation. He also pioneered joint assessment essays and prior to his departure joined a group of 12 students living in basic accommodation and examining waste management in Essex.  These various techniques are now common in university teaching, but at the time when Robin introduced them, they ran up against established practice. He, and other progressive colleagues had to battle the university bureaucracy to prove that the challenge was not so much to teach, but to facilitate active learning.

 References

1. See for example, Robin Murray, “Eurodollars: a survey”, London Business School, 1969; Robin Murray, “International Oligopoly in the Metal Container Industry”, London Business School, 1969; Robin Murray, “Guinea: A case study in post-colonial economic relations” and “The Aluminium Industry in Guinea”, London Business School, 1967; and, Robin Murray and Edith Penrose, “Aid and Private Investment”, London Business School, 1969

2. Robin Murray, “The Internationalisation of Capital and the Nation State”, The Spokesman no. 10, 1971 (Reprinted in New Left Review no. 67) and Robin Murray, “The Internationalisation of Capital and the British Economy”, The Spokesman, no. 11, 1971

3. Robin Murray, “The Chandarias: a Case Study of a Kenyan Multinational” in R Kaplinsky (ed.) Multinational Firms in Kenya, OUP, 1978 and Robin Murray, “Kanpur: a Case Study in the Transfer of Technology”, IDS, 1971. See also the later work on the subject, Robin Murray, Second Vic Godfrey Memorial Lecture, “Multinationals and Social Control in the 1990s”, presented at Owen Webb House, Cambridge, 18th February 1989

4. Robin Murray, “Underdevelopment, International Firms, and the International Division of Labour”, in Towards a New World Economy, Rotterdam University Press, 1972

5. Robin Murray, “North Sea Gas: a Case Study” (32 pages) together with teaching note (11 pages), London Business School, 1969

6. Robin Murray, “Transfer pricing and the State”, Conference on Transfer Pricing, IDS, March 6th-10th 1978; Robin Murray (ed.) Multinationals Beyond the Market: Intra-firm Trade and the Control of Transfer Pricing, Harvester Press, 1981 and; Robin Murray et al, “Major Issues Arising from the Transfer of Technology: a Case Study of Ethiopia”, report by the UNCTAD secretariat, Geneva, United Nations, 1974

7. Robin Murray, Transfer pricing and the State: a Manual, UNCTC, 1981

8. Robin Murray, “Cyprus Industrial Strategy”, report of the UNDP/UNIDO mission, main report, IDS, 1987 and Robin Murray et al, “Cyprus Industrial Strategy”, report on the fourth stage, IDS, 1989; Robin Murray, “Flexible Specialisation in Small Island Economies: the Case of Cyprus”, in Frank Pyke and Werner Sengenberger (eds.), Industrial Districts and Local Economic Regeneration, Geneva, International Institute for Labour Studies, 1992; and Robin Murray, “Restructuring the State: the Case of Economic Administration in Cyprus”, IDS, 1988

9. Robin Murray and Kurt Hoffman, “Flexible Specialisation: the Potential for Jamaica”, report of an exploratory mission, IDS, 1989; Robin Murray, “International Developments in the Food Industry”, prepared as part of the Jamaican Food Industry Strategy for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisations on behalf of Jampro and the Government of Jamaica, IDS, 1992; and Robin Murray, “Industry and Development Banking in Jamaica”, prepared for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation on behalf of the Government of Jamaica, IDS, 1991

10. Robin Murray, “Flexible Specialisation and Agro-Industry in Honduras”, prepared for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme on behalf of the Government of Honduras, IDS, 1992

11. Avril Joffe, David Kaplan, Raphael Kaplinsky and Dave Lewis, Improving Manufacturing Performance: The Report of the Industrial Strategy Project, University of Cape Town Press, 1995

12. Robin Murray, “Flexible Specialisation and Development Strategy: the Relevance for Eastern Europe” in Huib Ernste and Verena Meier (eds.) Regional Development and Contemporary Industrial Response, Belhaven Press, 1992

13. Institute of Development Studies, Flexible Specialisation: A New View on Small Industry, IDS Bulletin, vol. 23, no. 3, 1992

14. See Best M. H. The New Competition, Oxford, Polity Press, 1990 and Piore M. J. and C. Sabel The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, N. York, Basic Books, 1984 

15. Robin Murray, “Introduction”, New Forms of Public Administration, IDS Bulletin, vol. 23, no. 4, 1992; Robin Murray, “Towards a Flexible State”, New Forms of Public Administration, IDS Bulletin vol. 23, no. 4, 1992 and Robin Murray, “Transforming the State” in G Albo, D Langille and L Panitch (eds.) A different kind of state, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1993