The geography of the automotive industry has changed in recent years. This article focuses on the changes that are associated with 'modular production', whose diffusion has reinforced the need for proximity between auto-makers and parts-makers. The new geographical configurations that have cropped up, especially in the field of assembly operations, are based on spatial contiguity. On one hand, this spatial and organizational contiguity comprises a move away from former methods for managing vertical relationships; on the other hand, it has transformed the role that geographical proximity plays in the coordination of such activities. Such a co-evolution needs to be interpreted. Following a brief description of recent experimentation in this area, we try to determine how geographic proximity can drive the emergence of new methods for coordinating vertical relationships by highlighting some of the opportunities for organizational innovation that can result from proximity. Several factors will be discussed: the management of the logistical constraint; the convergence of representations; the site specificity by which vertical relationships can be stabilized; the different ways in which employment relationships can be managed; and the limits of all of these factors. We highlight both the benefits and the shortcomings of geographical proximity by drawing certain conclusions from the first experiments that the automobile industry has conducted. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
The terms ‘platform economy’ or ‘sharing economy’ have become widespread with the development of digital platforms like Uber. This economy is transforming capitalism and raising important questions about its nature. Is it a new process of embeddedness or is it the next step for deregulation following the crisis of the financialised regime of accumulation (RA)? Is it a possible new Growth Regime? Using the approach of the French Régulation school of thought, we describe the nature and transformations of the form of competition inherent in platforms. Although this may favour some forms of re-embeddedness, we show that it will accelerate some of the trends and characteristics of the institutional forms of the financialised RA and that it is an endogenous product of its crisis. This raises further questions and uncertainties related to the ability of platforms to generate stable long run growth due to the dysfunctionality of the mode of régulation and the conflicts it could generate.
This article focuses on the emergence of a new international division of labour in the auto parts industry. Its first section examines the hypothesis that the shift to modular production offers a chance to modify value chain geography inasmuch as modularity causes new opportunities and constraints in geographic proximity terms. An analytical matrix is provided and applied to New Accession Countries, with special consideration being given to French suppliers' circumstances due to the requirement that host country characteristics and company specificities be analysed simultaneously. The second section tests this matrix using statistical data and culminates in a case-study. It will be demonstrated that New Accession Countries are being integrated with the rest of the Continent, due to firms' ongoing search for location-related advantages and because of a tightening/easing interaction that is associated with proximity constraints.
Initial studies of modular manufacturing processes have shown that this dominant design required a fundamentally novel organisational structure of the industries. The underlying hypothesis of technological determinism merits a deeper exploration. The first part of the present paper aims at presenting the logic of this argument while making a distinction between the technological and organisational aspects of modularity. Based on this we then attempt a study of the manner in which the transition to modularity takes place in the aircraft and automobile industries. Our main conclusion is that while it may be possible to posit a convergence between these two industries, the paths followed are still quite clearly opposed.Modular production, supplier relationships, technological determinism, aircraft, automobile,
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