International integration and coordination in the global factory.

Zusammenfassung

---

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Siehe den Gesamtinhalt dieses Dokumentes

Auszug

---

International integration and coordination in the global factory.

Abstract:

* The new institutional form known as "the global factory" is the key to understanding changes in the configuration of the world economy.

* The evolution of the global factory requires managers to act as orchestrators or co-ordinators across the system of globally inter-connected firms. Managerial styles need to accommodate these changes.

* Integration and coordination in the global factory are critical success factors. Control of information is central to these roles. Location and control are still key variables but extra degrees of freedom in location of activities and non-ownership forms of control are increasing in importance.

Keywords: Global factory * International management--Multinational enterprise * Global strategy * Internalisation theory

Introduction

The new institutional form known as "the global factory" is the key to understanding the changes in, and configuration of, the global economy.

This paper examines globalisation and the growth of the global factory as a response to changing external circumstances and managerial innovations. It pays particular attention to the need to coordinate activities across the global factory and examines the changes in management style that are required to ensure success in a competitive global economy.

Technological changes, including the rise of e-commerce, have made global operations cheaper and more manageable. Managers in companies with global operations have learned to "fine slice" their activities and to locate each "stage" of activity in its optimal location and to control the whole supply chain, even when not owning all of it. These technological and managerial drivers have been augmented by political changes towards far more openness in previously closed economies. Even local factors can be seen to support global development. For instance, biases in the local capital market in China discriminate against whole swathes of local activity in the domestic private sector and make foreign ownership more likely than the growth of smaller indigenous firms (Huang 2003). The nature of the global factory varies over time and space. There have been three major step changes in the geographical separation of previously connected activities (Enderwick 2010). See Table 1. These are: (1) trade; the geogr...

Siehe den Gesamtinhalt dieses Dokumentes

---