Through decarbonization of the world economy a normative imperative to the realization of a post-fossil age emerged. The global ecosystem is threatened by the current world economic model and ...fundamental transformations are asked for in all economic sectors. For two decades now, the automotive industry is undergoing a permanent ambidextrous phase, after having been locked in technological routines for nearly a century. The omni-present electrification of the powertrain together with the technological convergence with connected-car and autonomous-driving technology are the key challenges. To process the pressure, new strategies are designed and implemented. Nevertheless, current studies, based on patent analysis show that classic powertrain technology still represents the dominant design. At the same time, patent analysis shows that competition between firms in the field of electric powertrain technology is fierce. We use patent citation analysis to improve our understanding of the underlying industrial learning processes and of their impacts. To analyze the change in the automotive industry and unveil actors’ strategies, we examine the three most essential differentiating features of an automobile: classic powertrain, electric powertrain and autonomous driving. We aim to analyze these main differentiators along three key questions: the geographic dimension, the positioning in the value chain, and the individual company perspective, by developing a new structuring logic– the ambidexterity matrix – and its dynamic representation along the ambidexterity path.
The fourth industrial revolution (IR4.0) toward automation and digitalization is the new trend among automobile production systems. Indubitably, the automobile industry has been scurrying in this ...revolution due to investment and governmental support availability. The current study examines the role of industry 4.0 on circular economy practices and supply chain capability to improve firm performance. Cross‐sectional data were collected from 286 respondents through a closed‐ended questionnaire. The adoption of circular economy practices improves the economic and operational performance of the firm. Also, industry 4.0 has the potential to make significant improvements in business operations. The empirical results confirm that industry 4.0 plays a positive role in implementation of circular economy practices and supply chain capability. Furthermore, circular economy practices provide evidence to have positive nexus with operational and economic performance. On the other hand, supply chain capability has a positive relationship with operational performance and has an insignificant association with economic performance, whereas operational performance improves economic health. Thus, the current research work provides the guidelines for the participating enterprises that can achieve sustainable goals by assimilating industry 4.0 in manufacturing systems.
This article explores the automotive lineage and manufacturing origins of platforms. Challenging prevailing assumptions that the platform is a digital artefact, and platform capitalism a new era, ...this article traces crucial elements of platform capitalism to Toyotist automobile manufacture in order to rethink the relationship between technology and organization. Arguing that the very terminology and industry applications of the ‘platform’ emerge from the automobile industry over the course of the 20th century, this article cautions against the uncritical adoption of epochal paradigms, or assumptions that new technologies require new organizational forms. By parsing the platform into two types, the stack and the intermediary, this article demonstrates how the platform concept and data-driven production practice both develop out of the Toyota Production System in particular, and American and Japanese analyses of it. Toyotism, we show, is the unseen industrial and epistemological background against which the platform economy plays out. In making this case, this article highlights the crucial continuities between the data-intensive production of companies like Uber and Amazon – emblematic of digital platform capitalism – and the organizational paradigms of the automobile industry. At a moment when the automobile returns to prominence amit platforms such as Uber, Didi Chuxing, or Waymo, and as we find tech companies turning to automobile manufacturing, this automotive lineage of the platform offers a crucial reminder of the automotive origins of what we now call platform capitalism.
Research Summary
We explore the effectiveness of economic experimentation as a learning mechanism through a historical exploration of the early automobile industry. We focus on a particular subset of ...economic experiments, called strategic pivots, that requires irreversible firm commitments. Our quantitative analysis suggests that strategic pivoting was associated with success. We then use historical methods to understand whether this association is reasonably interpreted as a causal link. We identify lessons that could only plausibly have been learned through strategic pivoting and document that those firms that were able to learn from the strategic pivots were most likely to succeed. We discuss the generalizability of our findings to build the hypothesis that strategic pivots and economic experiments originate firm strategy.
Managerial Summary
We explore the effectiveness of experimentation as a learning mechanism through a historical exploration of the early automobile industry. We focus on a particular subset of experiments, called strategic pivots, that requires irreversible firm commitments. Our analysis suggests that strategic pivoting was associated with success. We identify lessons that could only plausibly be learned through strategic pivoting and document that those firms that were able to learn from the strategic pivots were most likely to succeed. Even though firms may use lean techniques, market solutions may only be discovered through strategic pivots whose outcomes are unknowable ex‐ante. Therefore, successful strategies reflect an element of luck.
In response to severe energy and environmental challenges, electric vehicles (EVs) have been thoroughly considered by governments. Although China has become the largest EV market, currently the ...limitations of EVs and decreasing subsidies have led to a challenging future. To promote EV diffusion, we use a complex network evolutionary game method to explore the dynamic impacts of government policies on EV diffusion in different scale networks. The results show that with the increase in manufacturers in the network, the degree of EV diffusion increases accordingly at the same government policy level. In the present network scale of manufacturers, on the supply side, the effects of tax and subsidy policies can respectively promote EV diffusion to 0.82 and 0.86. Fuel vehicle (FV) license plate restrictions and consumer purchase subsidies are effective policies on the demand side, which both can promote EV diffusion to 0.84. Compared with consumer purchase subsidies, production subsidies for manufacturers have better effects on EV diffusion. Neither the tax and subsidy policies nor the FV license plate restriction and EV purchase subsidy policies can realize full EV diffusion. Finally, combined with the current status of China's automobile industry, the corresponding policy recommendations for different periods are given.
•A complex network evolutionary game method is used to explore the dynamic impacts.•We consider the interactions among government, enterprises and consumers.•Production subsidies have better effects on EV diffusion than purchase subsidies.•None of these policies can realize the full diffusion of EV.•This study can bring important insights into EV policy making in China.
Availability of limited resources presents the need for sustainable development strategies to achieve sustainable performance. However, in the era of digitalization and globalization many researchers ...explored the role of digital technologies in improving sustainable performance. However, the literature on the role of collaboration and coordination in a digitally enabled supply chain (SC) to achieve sustainability is still lacking. This study aims to investigate the effect of supply chain collaboration and coordination (SCC), sustainable development strategy (SDS), digital transformation (DIT), and collaborative advantages (COA) on sustainable supply chain firm performance (SSCFP). The conceptual model is based on the relational view (RV), transaction cost economics (TCE), technology, organization and environment (TOE), and resource‐based view (RBV) theories. This study utilizes structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze data collected from 361 respondents of the automotive industry in India. The findings show that SCC positively affects SDS and DIT. SDS positively affects DIT, COA, and DIT positively affects SSCFP. DIT fully mediates the relationship between SCC and COA. The study suggests that managers can apply SCC, SDS, and DIT in series to achieve sustainable performance. However, the COA can only be enhanced in the digitalized SC. The study provides empirical evidence to policymakers and practitioners for the synergy between SCC, SDS, DIT, and COA to achieve sustainable performance in the SC's manufacturing firm.
This paper proposes and empirically examines a model to investigate the effect of environmental regulations, top management commitment (TMCO) and organizational learning toward green product ...innovation (GPI). The proposed theoretical model, grounded in dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and upper echelons theory, is analyzed by Partial least squares (PLS) method using the data from Indian automotive manufacturing firms. The findings indicate the importance of TMCO and organizational learning for implementing GPI (in response to regulations), and achieve desired performance. Further, organizational learning fully mediates between commitment of top management and GPI. The findings can be useful for managers in automotive manufacturing firms who are interested toward implementing GPI. The paper contributes to green innovation literature by empirically examining the role of TMCO and organizational learning for GPI.
Research Summary
What makes some managers and entrepreneurs better at forecasting the industry context than others? We argue that, regardless of experience or expertise, a learning‐based forecasting ...behavior in which individuals attend to and incorporate new relevant information from the environment into an updated belief that aligns with the Bayesian belief updating process is likely to generate superior industry foresight. However, the effectiveness of such a cognitively demanding process diminishes under high levels of uncertainty. We find support for these arguments using an experimental design of forecasting tournaments in the managerially relevant context of the global automotive industry from 2016 to 2019. The study provides a novel account of individual‐level forecasting behavior and its effectiveness in an evolving industry and suggests important implications for managers and entrepreneurs.
Managerial Summary
How a focal industry will evolve is a key forecasting problem faced by managers and entrepreneurs as they seek to identify opportunities and make strategic decisions. However, developing superior industry foresight in the face of significant change, and limited and often contradictory information, can be especially challenging. We study how individuals forecast the ongoing transformation of the global automotive industry with respect to electrification and autonomy, using a novel research design of forecasting tournaments. A forecasting process in which individuals update their beliefs by neither ignoring prior information nor overacting to new information helps to generate superior industry foresight. There was a significant penalty to forecasting accuracy when individuals did not update their beliefs at all, or when they updated, but overreacted to new information.
While the global production networks (GPNs) approach produces important conceptual insights into the causal factors influencing GPNs, studies have been less concerned with the temporal intricacies of ...decision-making by actors. This article extends the GPN approach by examining why and how firms in the Welsh automotive sector have constructed and performed particular temporalities in response to the upheavals of COVID. A process philosophy perspective is utilized for examining how temporalities are socially constructed by human actors through actual occasions. Actors weave the past, present, and future together in socially constructed temporalities, which are imbricated with the space-times of actual occasions. The article finds that the temporalities and space-times of actions to mediate COVID have been configured around reducing and maintaining costs, and increasing risk management.
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