An exceptional success : the case of an export-oriented, locally-owned, small-scale manufacturing firm in a small island country

Abstract

A useful approach for appraising the economic development potential of small, often island, territories is to look for those rare examples of elusive economic success. Once they have been identified, one attempts to extrapolate what is idiosyncratic about the case at hand to a set of generalisable options. These then can lend themselves to policy action and operationalisation. Economic success is here taken to imply local capital and local technological ownership, profitable small scale manufacturing and export orientation. This paper sets out to demonstrate the potential of this inductive approach with a case study of a micro-enterprise from Viti Levu, Republic of the Fiji Islands.