| La lettre du GERPISA | no 110 (février 1997) |
Debate - 2 - Peter Jansen
1) the "logics of failure and retreat",
2) the risk evaluation of new emerging markets/new industrializing countries
and
3) the linkage between Lean Production and Globalization.
1. Looking at the outline of the programme, I've got the feeling, that globalization has been perceived as a new item of "success stories". But the trajectories of firms are composed by success stories and failures. From my point of view it seems to be rather usefull to analyze the "logics of failure and retreat". (For instance: Why did Volkswagen disclose its production plant Westmoreland in the USA? Could the company as easily reverse its engagements in central european countries?
Can newly globalizing companies renounce to foreign engagements like it had been possible for Chrysler?). In other words: by analyzing the "logics of failure" one recognizes the need of "strategies of retreat". At the same time one has to think about its feasibility. The same type of logics might be applied to the analyzis of markets. It might be rather usefull to have a look at the African market (research: Have there been in the past positive market prognostics?
Had there been errors in the evaluation of market capacities? If yes, why did prognostics fail?). By this type of questions I would like to underline the point of view, already stressed by Robert Boyer, that's to say the history of globalization and internationalization is a history of ups and downs. Therefore it does not seem very usefull, to base all efforts on the
extrapolation of recent trends of globalization. This is leading to my second point.
2. Taking into account the evaluation schemes of rating agencies, one can state that the the country specific risk evaluation is not only based on economic criterias but as well on political criterias like the stability of regimes and socio-political criterias (importance of unions). Therefore one has to raise the question to what extend decisions on the location of new plants are taking into account a mixture of economic, political and social criterias. National specific industrial policies have to be taken as well into account. A crucial example might be the types of engagement in the Chinese Market (future perspectives of joint ventures: will they lead to the creation of an independent national car industry, compeeting on the long run worldwide with its former shareholders?).
3. My last remark refers to the production organization and employment relations. Linked to considerations on the future of the "global car" one has to raise the question, whether the term "manufacturability" will have the same meaning in different countries/regions. Is the conception of a global car necessarily leading to a conception of one unique production process? Do the the local "human ressources" really fit (skills?) to the idea of "manufacturability" as it has been probably conceived by European, North American or Japonese engineers? Where is the use to export a capital intensive production process towards countries with cheap and probably unskilled labour? More general I would like to ask for the linkage of the old and the new GERPISA Programm: To what extend does the concept of Lean Production fit to different strategies of globalization (for example: how to combine the international specialisation with the approach of JIT?).