抄録
This paper focuses on innovation strategies used by major automobile makers. Using results of fieldwork in Japan, Korea, and India, it will analyze so-called catch-up generations to consider whether global localization investment has been a condition for being a leading company. Two examples of catch-up generations are considered. Hyundai Motor took about three decades to catch-up with Toyota, after Toyota took about three decades to catch up to Ford Motors. Henry Ford, Sakichi Toyoda and Ju-Yung Chung, as later arrivals to the automobile industry, passed on innovative manufacturing know-how to their family descendants who have cultivated those traditions into new managerial resources. The distinguished traits are entrepreneurial intent to create self-subsistent business, family-owned corporate succession, and well-articulated “management life cycles” of the preceding two factors.
Some Japanese and Korean makers under cumulative deficit sought help from foreign investors. This became a turning point for what are now global companies like Toyota and Hyundai. But extraordinary changes have been occurring recently; Tata Motors bought a Daewoo truck plant, while Shanghai Automotive acquired Ssangyong Motor. These cases are worth observing to see what performance they will show both in domestic and foreign markets. The paper suggests that localization investment strategy usually relies on a flexible division of labor anywhere around the world.
