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The purpose of this paper is to examine evolutionary processes of sectoral systems of innovation in China's catch‐up situation.

History event analysis method is used. The data that inform this paper come primarily from interviews carried out as a part of case studies of the innovations of China's car industry as well as public sources.

Market catch‐up of China's self‐owned brand cars expanded from low to high end market segment. Changes of the five building blocks of innovation system of China's car industry have driven the market catch‐up since the 1980s. The five building blocks are: market demand, industrial technology and knowledge base, institutional setting, industrial structure, firms' competences and strategy. China's car industry evolved through exploitation and exploration, which were affected by the five building blocks. The exploitation and exploration shaped the catch‐up way of China's car industry: from production localization to design localization and self‐owned brands. Exploration of the self‐owned brand group built on exploitation of the joint‐venture group.

The findings are based on a single industry. Studies on more industries are needed to generalize the research results.

Increased understanding of how sectoral systems of innovation evolve will give managers and policy makers in the developing countries like China improved opportunities to formulate policies and management practices that can cultivate innovation capabilities in catch‐up.

The paper contributes to the research stream on sectoral systems of innovation by understanding building blocks and evolutionary processes at the base of change and growth in the catch‐up situation.

The objective of this paper is to examine changes in the European car industry and in particular the impact these changes are having on the car makers and their relationships with their suppliers. With excess production capacity and the poor outlook for car sales, the European car industry requires structural changes to balance supply and demand. In an effort to address these problems, the car makers are re‐appraising their relations with their suppliers. They are now pursuing more intensive and interactive relationships with their suppliers, collaborating in areas such as new product development, supplier development, and information sharing on a range of issues. However, there is evidence to illustrate that there is a lack of trust between the car makers and their suppliers. It is argued that if the European car makers are to compete globally then there will have to be more trust and co‐operation between the car makers and the components industry.

This paper highlights that the strategic use of design, a competitive pattern typically associated with creative industries, those creating and trading meanings, also characterizes industries that produce functional or utilitarian goods not typically considered creative. The paper explores the origins of this phenomenon in the context of three industry settings: cars, speciality coffee and personal computers. The analysis theorizes three distinct strategic paths that explain how design may become an institutionalized aspect of competition in industries that are not creative. We explain how firms link their products to the identities of their users, how design is linked to stakeholders' emotions and visceral reactions to products and how intermediaries are relevant to enhancing attention to design. Illuminating these strategic paths allows harnessing some of the well-established understandings about competition in creative industries towards understanding competition in noncreative industries.

Aims to test Walton and McKersie’s theory on labour negotiations, specifically in the case of German car manufacturers.

The research is based on interviews with industrial actors in Germany’s car industry – an empirical case study.

The article explains the structural force behind the managerial drive towards production. While German managers act at an enterprise level, a structural force has been responsible for the success of Germany’s post‐WW II manufacturing. Germany’s collective bargaining structure removed wage and working‐time bargaining from local management and opened four managerial options: production, productivity, innovation, and quality. This structure forced management to focus on these four options because they lie within the realm of management prerogative. The article explains how structural divisions between intra‐enterprise level arrangements and extra‐enterprise level collective bargaining at a conceptual level can best be understood.

Argues that a regional and industry collective bargaining structure has supported the success of a competitive car industry in Germany.

In the British and European motor industry there co‐exist firms which differ widely in size. Given the existence of economies of scale the smaller firms are faced with the problem of survival; more precisely, of being able to charge a premium price to offset higher unit costs. After confirming the existence of scale economies this paper looks at the corporate strategies of smaller firms, but first it is necessary to clarify what we mean by “smaller firms”. In any market for any good where economies of scale exist in its production, firms smaller than the optimum could, if no non‐scale problems exist, be at a cost and, with competition, a profit disadvantage. However, in the motor industry the term “smaller” covers various types of operation.

Electric vehicles are often positioned as a politically easy option for low-carbon mobility, compared to other options, such as cycling, public transit, and walkable communities. This is difficult to assess confidently, however. The rate of adoption for electric vehicles that will be necessary over the next few decades to avoid the worst consequences of climate change will bring about new political struggles. This chapter uses a political-economic analysis to discuss what these struggles might look like. Using literature on the structure of automobility, along with evidence on the ways which electric vehicles disrupt the existing systems built around private car use, it discusses how a rapid transition to electric mobility will affect the material interests of various groups. One big impact will be on production, where the radical changes necessary to re-tool the auto industry to build electric vehicles will create major risks for car companies and their workers. A second impact will be on infrastructure, where the conversion of parking space into electric vehicle charging stations could arouse local political opposition, particularly in cities. Finally, electric vehicles might conflict with the cultural and symbolic lock-in of conventional vehicles, resulting not only in slower adoption but also the potential for active resistance against electric vehicle policies and infrastructure. Taken together, this implies that electric vehicles will not be a form of low-carbon mobility that is free of political struggle. Widespread electrification of private automobility could be aggressively opposed by powerful groups who have strong economic incentives to do so.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the first quarter of 2020 has caused a severe decline in stock markets worldwide. While prior studies in developed markets found that workplace closure can negatively impact the capital market (e.g. Ozili and Arun, 2020), lesser is known about how it impacts emerging capital markets, which may have different characteristics and behaviour (Harjoto et al., 2021). Hence, this study seeks to uncover stock performance around workplace closure dates of firms incorporated in ASEAN countries and investigates the role of accounting fundamentals in mitigating workplace closure policy's effects on stock performances.

Using an event study methodology, the authors measure the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) around workplace closure dates. The authors then use cross-sectional analysis to analyse whether the accounting fundamentals, specifically profitability, cash flow, and leverage, are associated with the CAR. This cross-sectional study involves 1,720 firms that are incorporated in the ASEAN countries.

This analysis indicates that, on average, ASEAN capital markets react negatively to workplace closure policies. The authors then find that the CARs around workplace closure dates are positively associated with the current ratios and are negatively associated with long-term debt ratios. This study’s results thus indicate that firms with a higher liquidity and a higher solvency experience a less adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic than other firms. The authors also find that the associations are more robust for (1) firms in industries more affected by COVID-19 and (2) firms located in countries with more severe cases. Additionally, contrary to this study’s expectation, the authors do not find meaningful associations between CARs around workplace closure dates and firms' cash flow from operation and profit respectively. This study’s results suggest that investors view prior performances related to firms' ability to generate operating cash flow and profit as less relevant to measure firm performance around the workplace closure event.

This study’s results contribute to studies examining fundamental accounting roles during the COVID-19 era, specifically in emerging economies. The findings are critical for investors in understanding the company fundamentals associated with stock price performance in emerging markets during the recent health-related crisis.

Most studies analysing cross-sectional differences in stock returns during the COVID-19 era focus on industry-level differences and use observations from developed markets (Sinagl, 2020; Ramelli and Wagner, 2020). Studies using firm-level analysis in emerging markets are still limited. The authors expand prior studies by using firm-level analysis that spans six countries in ASEAN.

Rapid inflation, the severe reduction in demand for cars and the resultant over‐capacity, reestablished the importance of price as a competitive weapon in the car market between late 1973 and 1977. In times of steady economic growth the over‐whelming influence of changes in per capita income on car demand tends to relegate the price variable to a secondary position, and often it is almost totally discounted as a major causative variable. However, in a number of ways the state of the market in the mid 1970s has shown the continuing importance of relative prices: the pricing of imports, exports and price competition by domestic manufacturers all being geared to improving a manufacturer's market penetration. Consequently, the pricing decision remains as one of the most important features of competitive strategy and as a major factor in managerial decision making.