The competitiveness of the UK aerospace industry

Abstract

The aerospace industry is often regarded as one of Britain's last remaining world class, high technology manufacturing industries and this paper assesses its international competitiveness. Various statistical indicators are used to measure competitiveness, based on published data at the industry and firm level, supplemented with information derived from company interviews. Indicators include productivity, output, firm size, development time-scales, labour hoarding, exports and profitability. The empirical results of this paper suggest that, over the period 1980-2000, the UK aerospace industry improved its competitiveness compared with the USA and the EU.

Global R&D in the Aerospace and Defence Industry. Knowledge Creation with Local Firms in Host Countries.

“…The explanation for this lies in the fact that governments, which have significant ability to influence the planning and organization of the military and civil branches of the AI (Braddorn and Hartley, 2007), effectively restrict knowledge loss. Moreover, the non-significance of this factor may also be explained by the fact that most of the projects that incorporate non-national suppliers are those undertaken by companies in Europe and the United States.…”

Key Enablers for the Evolution of Aerospace Ecosystems

“…The UK aerospace ecosystem is considered one of the most successful in the world (Braddorn and Hartley 2007;McGuire 2017). Although the UK manufacturing ecosystem has experienced a relative decline since the 1960s compared to other countries and sectors of the UK economy, the aerospace and the pharmaceutical ecosystems have been among the most successful manufacturing sectors in the UK during the last decades (Garside 1998;Kitson and Michie 2014).…”

Joining Global Aerospace Value Networks: Lessons for Industrial Development Policies

“…Therefore, to identify which strategies may be addressed by public policies, the relevant dimensions of value network configurations need to be identified. Even though the literature has provided numerous studies that aim at characterizing various regional aerospace sectors, along with their roles in global value networks [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45], these characteristics are not clear. For this reason, a review about the dimensions of value network configurations in the global aerospace industry will be addressed in the next section.…”

“…The industry contributed £31.1 billion to the UK economy in 2015; of which £27 billion was exports earnings [61]. The UK aerospace industry cluster focuses on activities in the design, development, manufacture and support of aircraft, helicopters, missiles and space systems, such as satellites [39].…”