IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/513.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Many roads to flexibility. How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France

Author

Listed:
  • Hancké, Bob

Abstract

This paper discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the "Golden Age," large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 1980s, and the traditional state-financed way out of the problems was no longer available, they saw in these proto-regional production systems a chance to become more competitive. They relied on the decentralization policies of the governments in the 1980s, and used the second-order effects of the new policies as a means to modernise their own operations.

Suggested Citation

  • Hancké, Bob, 2003. "Many roads to flexibility. How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 513, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/513/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward H. Lorenz, 1993. "Flexible Production Systems and the Social Construction of Trust," Politics & Society, , vol. 21(3), pages 307-324, September.
    2. David J. TEECE, 2008. "Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Transfer And Licensing Of Know-How And Intellectual Property Understanding the Multinational Enterprise in the Modern World, chapter 5, pages 67-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Armelle Gorgeu & René Mathieu, 1996. "L' « assurance qualité fournisseur » de l'industrie automobile française," Revue d'Économie Industrielle, Programme National Persée, vol. 75(1), pages 223-237.
    4. Glyn, Andrew, 1997. "Does Aggregate Profitability Really Matter?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 21(5), pages 593-619, September.
    5. Berger,Suzanne & Piore,Michael J., 1980. "Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521231343, September.
    6. Dupuy, Claude & Gilly, Jean-Pierre, 1999. "Industrial Groups and Territories: The Case of Matra-Marconi-Space in Toulouse," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 23(2), pages 207-223, March.
    7. W. Rand Smith, 1990. "Nationalizations for What? Capitalist Power and Public Enterprise in Mitterrand's France," Politics & Society, , vol. 18(1), pages 75-99, March.
    8. Edward Lorenz, 1988. "Neither Friends nor Strangers," Post-Print halshs-00483728, HAL.
    9. Culpepper, Pepper D., 2001. "Employers, Public Policy, and the Politics of Decentralized Cooperation in Germany and France," Working Paper Series rwp01-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    10. Dorothée Rivaud-Danset & Robert Salais, 1992. "Les conventions de financement des entreprises. Premières approches théorique et empirique," Revue Française d'Économie, Programme National Persée, vol. 7(4), pages 81-120.
    11. Mueller, Frank & Loveridge, Ray, 1995. "The 'Second Industrial Divide'? The Role of the Large Firm in the Baden-Wurttemberg Model," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 4(3), pages 555-582.
    12. Ulrich, Karl, 1995. "The role of product architecture in the manufacturing firm," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 419-440, May.
    13. Edward Lorenz, 1993. "Flexible Production Systems and the Social Construction of Trust," Post-Print halshs-00483723, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hancké, Bob, 1999. "Revisiting the French model: coordination and restructuring in French industry in the 1980s," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economic Change and Employment FS I 99-301, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Joseph Lampel & Zur Shapira, 2001. "Judgmental Errors, Interactive Norms, and the Difficulty of Detecting Strategic Surprises," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(5), pages 599-611, October.
    3. Hancké, Bob, 1997. "Modernisation without flexible specialisation: how large firm restructuring and government regional policies became the step-parents of autarchic regional production systems in France," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economic Change and Employment FS I 97-304, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Valérie Revest & Samira Guennif, 2005. "Social structure and reputation: the NASDAQ case study," Post-Print halshs-00163731, HAL.
    5. Murmann, Johann Peter & Frenken, Koen, 2006. "Toward a systematic framework for research on dominant designs, technological innovations, and industrial change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 925-952, September.
    6. Fixson, Sebastian K. & Park, Jin-Kyu, 2008. "The power of integrality: Linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1296-1316, September.
    7. Raja Roy & Susan K. Cohen, 2017. "Stock of downstream complementary assets as a catalyst for product innovation during technological change in the U.S. machine tool industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(6), pages 1253-1267, June.
    8. MacCormack, Alan & Baldwin, Carliss & Rusnak, John, 2012. "Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1309-1324.
    9. Inkpen, Andrew C. & Currall, Steven C., 1998. "The nature, antecedents, and consequences of joint venture trust," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-20, July.
    10. Yan, Tingting & Wagner, Stephan M., 2017. "Do what and with whom? Value creation and appropriation in inter-organizational new product development projects," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 1-14.
    11. Fujita, Mai, 2013. "Exploring the sources of China's challenge to Japan : models of industrial organisation in the motorcycle industry," IDE Discussion Papers 419, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    12. Antonino Vaccaro & Stefano Brusoni & Francisco M. Veloso, 2011. "Virtual Design, Problem Framing, and Innovation: An Empirical Study in the Automotive Industry," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 99-122, January.
    13. Sako, Mari & Helper, Susan, 1998. "Determinants of trust in supplier relations: Evidence from the automotive industry in Japan and the United States," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 387-417, March.
    14. Anna Cabigiosu, 2018. "When do modular dominant designs emerge? A theoretical framework," Working Papers 05, Venice School of Management - Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    15. Mathieu Detchessahar, 1998. "L'homologie des trajectoires socioprofessionnelles des acteurs de la coopération interentreprises: un vecteur de confiance et de stabilité," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 1(1), pages 49-70, March.
    16. Alessandro Innocenti & Sandrine Labory, 2004. "Outsourcing and Information Management," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 1(1), pages 107-125, June.
    17. Robert J. Bennett, 1998. "Business associations and their potential contribution to the competitiveness of SMEs," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 243-260, January.
    18. Filitz, Rainer & Henkel, Joachim & Tether, Bruce S., 2015. "Protecting aesthetic innovations? An exploration of the use of registered community designs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1192-1206.
    19. Illoong Kwon & Kitae Sohn, 2021. "Trust or distrust: entrepreneurs vs. self-employed," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1553-1570, April.
    20. Jeffrey Funk, 2007. "Technological Change Within Hierarchies: The Case Of The Music Industry," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 1-16.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.