Since the 1970s development studies have conveyed an impression of Taiwanese firms as being active small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) with flexibility to successfully survive in a competitive global market. On the contrary, we use the unbalanced panel data of 2,969 top manufacturers during 2002–2015 to explore why and how Taiwanese firms expanded their scale and scope of operations in the new century. Our findings indicate that Taiwanese subcontractors are caught in a dilemma between...
