Globalization or Regionalization of the American and Asian Car Industry?

Abstract

The three editors of the two books are co-director (Freyssenet) and members (Shimizu, Volpato) of the Steering Committee respectively of GERPISA (Permanent group for the study of the automobile industry and its employees). This international research network counts 350 members in 27 countries (2002) and has been based in France since it was established in 1981 by Michel Freyssenet and Patrick Fridenson at the School for Advanced Social Science Studies, Paris. In 1992 GERPISA became an international research network and started its first research program (1993-96) on the ‘Emergence of new industrial models’ under the research directors, Robert Boyer and Michel Freyssenet. A second research program (1997-1999) was titled ‘The automobile industry: Between globalization and regionalization’ and this was directed by Michel Freyssenet and Yannick Lung. A third program (2000-2002) under supervision of Yannick Lung investigated the topic ‘Co-ordination of knowledge and competencies in the regional automotive systems’ with support from the European Union. At present the GERPISA network is trying to consolidate its approach and findings into a new analytical framework and developing a new research program (website: www.gerpisa.univ-evry.fr ). The books under review are outputs of the second research program addressing the question of automobile globalization or regionalization. The authors rely on the findings of the first program which critically addressed the ‘One Best Way’ paradigm developed by the USA-based International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP), a global automobile research program headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1980. In the famous book, ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ (1991), the IMVP-researchers, Womack, Jones and Roos argued that ‘lean production’ (coined by John Krafcik) is a universal best practice of automobile manufacturing in the international automobile industry making it possible to double production and quality at low costs compared to mass production. The GERPISA network developed an alternative understanding of international automotive manufacturing, the ‘Productive Models’ approach, emphasizing the mutual and dynamic conditioning of productive systems and their environment. In short, the ‘productive models’ paradigm contends, contrary to the MIVP-lean production thinking, that it is impossible to outline one universally most productive model because the contexts will vary, and hence, several productive models may be equally competitive at the same time (Volpato 2003). Where the IMVP-researchers contended that ‘lean production’ is a universal manufacturing methodology based on Japanese experiences but a-cultural and transferable, GERPISA researchers identified three successful ‘productive models’: VW represents the ‘Sloan model’ originally developed by GM in the mid-20th century; Toyota the model of ‘permanent reducing costs at constant volume’; and Honda the model of ‘innovation and flexibility’. In the conception of the GERPISA framework, ‘lean production’ is a conceptual hybrid of the Toyota model and the Honda model and hence, a contradictory and unsustainable concept of automobile manufacturing.