Denmark: an experimental laboratory for new industrial models

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Abstract
At the close of the nineteenth century, Denmark witnessed competition between several industrial models. One was to transform Denmark into a mass-production society. Countering this were the fanners' co-operative movement and the small artisan firms which organised as local networks. Where farmers co-operatives set up their centres a railway station soon followed and these provided a seed bed for small artisan workshops. Each was dependent on tihe other, creating and supplying local markets and stabilising the rural population, with the railway providing access to national and international markets. Competition from mass-producers cawed the craft producers to create craft-specific schools above the local schools and their own technological institute in order to adopt new technologies useful in small scale production. The unions also developed the skills of the unskilled and semi-skilled to a level competing with the artisarns. The resuit of these various influences is that the Taylorist model of mass production has never taken root in Denmark. The model of industrialisation has become one of flexible specialisation.

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