Purpose
There is a great reliance on fiscal incentives to sustain the automotive industry competitiveness due to several structural problems, among them the inefficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to compare the supply chain structure of traditional automotive industry with the supply chains from South Korea and China. Based on strategic decision and transaction cost theory, this comparison seeks to exploit the factors that led to the inefficiency of automotive supply chains.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a qualitative approach and applied a multi-method research. They conducted semi-structured interviews with six executives from automakers representing the selected countries, carried individual meetings during one workshop and used secondary data from several sources.
Findings
Concepts identified in the research such as reliability, supply chain governance and automaker competencies led the authors to propose that the traditional automakers have higher transaction costs when compared to the new automakers due to the horizontal structure of their supply chain. While new competitors have vertical upstream supply chains, which indicates better profitability, traditional automotive industry is horizontal, depends on fewer Tier 1 suppliers and is disconnected from Tier 2, impacting negatively in the transaction costs and supply chain management.
Practical implications
This study suggests that automotive executives rethink the current upstream supply chain model by identifying the competencies required for their current and future competitiveness and implementing a vertical integration of these competencies.
Originality/value
This research exploited the inefficiency of supply chain as one of the explanations for the low competitiveness of the national automotive industry.
PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the formation of an inter-organizational collaboration network that made it possible to repair 2,516 mechanical respirators that were inoperative in Brazil during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative approach was used in a single case study with semi-structured interviews. The interviewee selection process was non-probabilistic through snowball sampling.FindingsThe results suggest that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks, and this organizational configuration can be an alternative for facing crises where actions isolated would be insufficient or slow to urgently address complex situations.Practical implicationsThis paper aims to (1) demonstrate that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks; (2) favor the understanding and dynamics of the formation of a network; and (3) contribute to a possible replication of this initiative in future contexts.Originality/valueThe case portrays an unprecedented formation of a collaboration network involving more than 144 organizations that mobilized quickly in a complex context of a pandemic and that generated remarkable results through the reintroduction of equipment that were responsible for the preservation of thousands of lives during the year from 2020.
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