Coodinating Competencies and Knoledge in Regional Automotive Systems

The GERPISA's eighth international conference allowed for the launching of a new research program: "Coordinating Competencies and Knowledge in Regional Automotive Systems". This program will most certainly mobilize our network members over the months to come. The high quality of the papers presented at our parallel sessions and the wealth of debates underline the potential our network has in analyzing the structural changes that are occurring in the automotive industry. This new research program is based on the observation that automobile firms are increasingly confronted with the need to find new competencies in all realms, ranging from electronics, intelligent transport systems, all the way to retail or finance. As a consequence, coordinating knowledge, both within the firm's organization and in its relations with other firms, has become a major strategic issue for carmakers, be it in the different tiers of the supply chain or in the management of automobile dealerships. Managers are not the only ones to express these preoccupations. They also form the heart of new issues affecting workers and their unions in light of the impact they have on outsourcing policies, internal restructuring, or professional training and trajectory choices.

Our new research program clearly emanates from the two preceding ones. First of all, it takes into account the limits of globalization by focusing on regional integrations currently underway (the European Union, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, ASEAN). Yet it does not come to the rapid conclusion that regional integration will serve as the unique modality of rendering a productive system coherent. In a number of cases, the national level continues to predominate (Japan, South Korea), or quite simply is in the process of emerging (India, China, Russia). Therefore, the national factor continues to be a pertinent one to study in order to understand dynamics surrounding automotive systems. Approaching the subject through an analysis of regional systems seeks to highlight this dynamic of coherence by acknowledging that institutional arrangements play a role in the choices actors make (carmakers, component makers, equipment suppliers, firms specialized in engineering and design, dealers, finance, etc.). The concept of automotive system, proposed by Jean-Jacques Chanaron and Etienne de Banville approximately ten years ago, directly refers to this dynamic by accounting for interactions between actors whose diverse profit strategies and productive models serve as the very basis of this dynamic.

The first day of our conference offered a discussion around the theoretical proposals presented by Robert Boyer and Michel Freyssenet that had been previously introduced in recent Lettre du GERPISA. Their conceptual grid, the first systematic attempt to theorize the variety of firms, must now be extended so as to anchor this diversity not only in the level of a comparative study of firmsí trajectories but also to analyze the articulation of strategies and productive models in their coherent integration within regional automotive systems for both carmakers and other actors. Once such example of diversity requiring reflection could be the following. No one would contest the fact that specialized assemblers such as Karman play an important role in the European automotive system due to their complimentarity with generalist producers. Thus, one must construct a representation of automotive systems and describe their evolution by integrating two major issues related to the next program and that have served as the basis of our recent conference: modularization and financialization..

We are going to initiate an original procedure to launch a collective research dynamic within our network. Either in our Lettre du GERPISA or by e-mail, a certain number of key-questions will be submitted for discussion, proposed amendments and completion by GERPISA members. You are all invited to integrate your own research projects over the next few months by proposing contributions that either fit into the aforementioned questions and issues raised or that open up towards new orientations. At the next meeting of the International Steering Committee (Fall 2000), we will attempt to synthesize these proposals and finalize the 2000-2002 research agenda. We hope that you will participate actively this preliminary phase of our new research program.

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