Questions de recherche - Nicolas Hatzfeld

industrial principles, profit strategies and models

Almost all automobile producers apply three shared socio- productive principles: standardization of components, decomposition-recomposition of work, and fluidity, implying mechanization and production in linear form. These principles, which play a strong structuring role in both design and production, are implemented in different and variable market and labour force contexts. Companies must therefore separate themselves by the profit strategies they adopt in these contexts: some favour volumes, others combine volume and diversity, others again... The strategies that are actually adopted can be observed in the combination of several criteria, principally volume, variety, quality of products, and capacity to adjust costs to demand by reducing the break-even point. The discussion focused on several of these criteria, their relevance and the possibilities of combining them. According to Robert Boyer and Michel Freyssenet, three strategies proved their viability during the 1970-1990 period, while several others led the companies that had adopted them to reorient themselves.

These different strategies characterize families of company socio-productive configurations. In fact, the same strategy can be pursued with different means. Thus Toyota and PSA appear to have followed very similar strategies in the past decade. However, while there are partial similarities between the two companies (a logic of savings, provincialism, moderate innovation . . .), this does not imply that they have adopted the same model.

Conversely, while a company may change its strategy relatively easily, its organization frequently prevents it from doing so rapidly. Thus, at Volkswagen, the transition from the "monoculture" of the Beetle to a diversified range with one dominant model, the Golf, took 10 years and several attempts. These difficulties indicate the depth of change necessitated by this strategic change.

Socio-productive configurations which follow the same strategy are different because of the different histories of each company, and the different contexts, especially the employment relationship. Some, unstable and not viable, undergo more or less controlled reorganizations, while others reveal a coherence, robustness and stability. It is the latter which are defined as models (the term, as with our whole research procedure, does not imply any normative hierarchy).

Industrial models are therefore these coherent socio-productive apparatuses which permit variations in the environment to be overcome. They cannot however be summarized in terms of the plans of the company: many of certain variables cannot be their constituent parts cannot be manoeuvred at will (subjectivity, constraints), controlled by company managers; they are therefore located in the area of balance between powers and constraints, processes which are always being revised. On the one hand, they have strong and relatively durable structures, and on the other hand they bring about, through their very success and their associated rigidities, the conditions in which they are put in question again, as with the case of Ford during the first half of the century.

For a company, giving up a model is accompanied not only by new learning, but also often difficult ruptures. The example of Ford is also significant in this regard: in the inter-war period, it was not only increased competition, but also the threat of bankruptcy, which made the company give up its previous logic.

Circumstances play a determinant role in the construction of a viable model. It was in post-war Europe that macro-economic and societal conditions were met for the application of the Fordist model, in a reorganized form. A model can therefore travel. It may no longer work in one country but transfer to another. From this perspective, studying transplants is particularly useful: on the one hand the robustness of a model in distinct contexts can be tested, and on the other hand the possible birth of a new model can be envisaged on the basis of an original company configuration. And the end of a model does not necessarily indicate that it was not viable, but perhaps that the conditions which made it possible have changed. In this case, it may rediscover a favourable "space" if these conditions are essentially met elsewhere. This hypothesis leads us to reexamine, for instance, the configuration of several English automobile producers which seem to have prospered in the inter-war period. They may have constituted a specific model, albeit never theorized.

Lastly, different models may co-exist. There is no single market in either capital, technology, goods or work, and there are different societal data (employment relationship, role of the State... ). A management model also includes hidden costs which make it difficult to transfer. Moreover, it is often possible to apply several different solutions, approximately equivalent, to the same problem. Finally, to make headway when there is already a model in place, it is in the interests of a company not to compete directly on the same battlefield with the same arms. Hence companies are driven to pursue different strategies.