International Motor Vehicle Program Globalization Research Program Fiscal Year 1999 Summary Report

Abstract

Program Summary: One of the key drivers of change in the automotive industry can be summed up by the word "globalization." Globalization is driving industry consolidation, the expanding role of suppliers, underbody commonalization, product diversification, and efforts to reduce minimum scale economies in final assembly plants. Automakers, along with their largest suppliers, are in the process of creating enterprise and supply-base structures that function at a truly global scale. Because globalization connects activities occurring in an extremely diverse set of locations, it is an inherently complex process, one that cannot call for a static set of strategic responses or result in a single societal or competitive outcome. Accordingly, IMVP's Globalization Research Program (GRP) is relying on a series on inter-linked research projects that seek to understand the process of globalization in terms if corporate strategy, industry organization, and social impacts for both "home" and "host" countries.