Dynamic Capabilities in a Learning Society—The Case of Taiwan in Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak

The development literature in the 1990s highlighted the role of business elites and the government in an endowed embedded autonomy for economic wealth generation that is coevolved with societal welfare (Evans, 1995), in turn leading to desired socioeconomic development. The observations in Breznitz (2007) and Amsden et al. (2012) imply the significance of upgrading allies of elites in an economy, and how the derived institution leads to productive outcomes—as opposed to a predatory state, which enables capture by elites and portends a regressive governing outcome. Elites are professionally trained and selected—thus, it is desirable to have them guard the established institution, as it is perceived that they do this selflessly unlike the “masses”. The national solidarity of ruling elites in governing affairs (e.g. socioeconomic, health, security, commerce, etc.) is not uncommon in many countries. In recent years, there has been a wave of realization countering the view on the supremacy of elites and the need to form an army of superordinates to develop an economy (e.g. Major and Machin 2018; Markovits 2019). The pursuit of upgrading by elites may lead to industrial growth—but what also follows are income inequality and discontent between classes (in a country) and between economies. Many (Barr 2016; Pleyers 2020; Tan 2012) began to realize that decisions made by the elites/technocrats which are supposed to bewell thought out and rationally calculated could—on some occasions—lead tomediocre (unimpressive) results or even disastrous outcomes. Taiwan—once recognized as a Tiger economy (Mathews and Cho 2000: 157– 202)—had its success attributed by many to the superordinate workforce that