Modularization and the Dynamics of Inter-organizational Collaboration: Producing and Bridging Spatial and Organizational Distances

Abstract

In the past decades, the aviation industry has gone through a fundamental transformation from vertically integrated corporations to globally dispersed, more modular forms of production thereby profoundly affecting the inter-organizational collaboration between the diverse actors within the related production network. Drawing on empirical data from an aviation cluster in Germany, this paper analyzes from a multi-level perspective how Airbus' new strategy of modular and global sourcing lead to processes of disembedding on a geographical, cognitive and network level, while simultaneously processes of embedding and integration were initiated that become visible at the new module boundaries and have been captured using the heuristics of proximity and distance.