Leveraging Technological Capabilities across Polarized Cultures: Shanghai Delco Electronics Limited

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 27-54
Author(s):  
Lucy A. Ojode
Keyword(s):  
Automotive Industry ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
New Technology ◽  
General Motors ◽  
International Joint Venture ◽  
Instrument Cluster ◽  
General Motor ◽  
Implementation Challenges ◽  
Automotive Systems ◽  
The Government

Rallying its units for an impending spin-off from General Motors, the Delphi Automotive Systems division cleared the Delphi Delco Electronics (Delphi-D) unit to begin planning for entry into China in 1994. Delphi saw China as ideal for leveraging its technological and innovation capabilities as well as the enormous General Motor heritage and reputation from years of experience delivering quality products to the automotive industry. Delphi-D found a perfect partner in Shanghai Changjiang YiBiao Factory (SCY) (name disguised to protect the firms) that held nearly 50% of the Chinese automobile instrument cluster market. SCY was keen on acquiring new technology to meet increasingly sophisticated customer demands in order to retain market lead as well as to tap into the international market. After rounds of negotiation the two firms formed a fifty-fifty joint venture, Shanghai Delco Electronics Ltd. (SDE) in August 1996. However, SDE started experiencing problems almost immediately. The Delphi-D team at SDE assumed their SCY counterparts would willingly integrate proposed technology and the requisite processes at the joint venture. However, the SCY team resisted prescriptions from the Delphi-D team that they sometimes perceived as "haughty". Broiled in culturally-loaded misunderstanding in a market that was becoming complex by the day as the government legislated new regulations and other manufacturers jostled for a piece of the market, SDE's management sought focus by developing a five-year plan that captured the partners' goals in 1998. However, as the end of 2002 approached, SDE's five-year plan remained largely unrealized. This case shows how implementation challenges can affect the realization of joint venture objectives and illustrates specific challenges that can mar even a well-formulated technology intensive international joint venture strategy.

scholarly journals THE EMERGENCE OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IN CHINA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Krause ◽  
◽  
Nadiya Golda ◽  
Iryna Pinyak ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Automotive Industry ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Engineering Industry ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Small Range ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
Car Market

The engineering industry, including the automotive industry, belongs to the strategic branches of the country’s economy and to a large extent determines the level of development. The Chinese automobile industry dates back to 1953, and the first automobile factory, the First Automobile Works (FAW), was started in Beijing. Over the next few years, several more car factories were established in Nanjing, Khanhai, Jinan and Beijing. The requirements of funds, technologies and automotive modernization stimulated the attraction of external investment. A number of restrictive measures have been adopted to curb external competition, reduce car imports and attract innovative technologies, including high tariff and non-tariff barriers, screening, and restrictions on foreign capital, Limiting market share to foreign companies. When signing the joint-venture agreement, the Chinese side insisted on technology transfer and subordination to the Chinese leadership. Volkswagen first built a car factory in China. Today almost every progressive car company is represented in the Chinese car market, such as Mercedes-Bens, Ford, General Motors, Suzuki, Daihatsu, Honda, Subaru, Citreon, Toyota. Most of them have partnerships with one of China’s top three car manufacturers. American, European, and Japanese automakers see China as a promising market as demand for vehicles in the US and Europe shrinks. To the Chinese automobile market, the cars are made according to the requirements of the local consumer – conservative, with high-quality design, low and middle price segment. Since 2009, foreign automobile companies have accounted for 85% of the Chinese car market. About 60% of the cars sold in China are locally produced. However, China’s automobile industry is highly fragmented and mostly consists of small companies that produce a small range of components. Such production is labour-intensive with relatively low use of advanced technologies compared to car manufacturers in developed countries, often lacking economies of scale. Research expenditure accounts for a large part of the expenditure structure. Most companies produce low-tech parts with significant import presence.

Technology Acquisition in Korea’s Automobile Industry

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-428
Author(s):  
Ga Hyung Kim ◽  
Jai S. Mah
Keyword(s):  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Technology Licensing ◽  
Technology Acquisition ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Gain Access

Abstract The automobile industry developed very rapidly in Korea from the mid-1970s onwards. In the early stage of its development, it used both foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and technology licensing contracts to utilize advanced foreign technologies. The government mainly preferred technology licensing to FDI inflows to gain access to production technologies. A specific case of FDI is displayed in the joint venture between General Motors and Daewoo Motors. Although there were several improvements and assistances provided to the latter, its performance was relatively unsatisfactory. In contrast, Hyundai Motors relied on technology licensing, which turned out to be successful. Korea’s experience of technology acquisition in the automobile industry shows that for a developing country considering development of its own automobile industry, it would be beneficial to utilize technology licensing rather than FDI inflows.

Making It Count

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.

scholarly journals Effects of Emerging-Economy Firms’ Knowledge Acquisition from an Advanced International Joint Venture Partner on Their Financial Performance Based on the Open Innovation Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Choo Yeon Kim ◽  
Eun-Hwa Seo ◽  
Canisha Booranabanyat ◽  
Kwangsoo Kim
Keyword(s):  
Financial Performance ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Absorptive Capacity ◽  
Open Innovation ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Emerging Economy ◽  
Innovation Performance ◽  
Mediation Effect ◽  
International Joint Venture ◽  
International Joint

Although emerging-economy firms (E-E firms) must have a keen interest in improving their performance by utilizing knowledge transferred from their advanced international joint venture (IJV) partner, there has been little research on the performance implications of E-E firms’ knowledge transferred from their advanced IJV partner. So, drawing on open innovation and organizational learning perspectives, we examine whether, how, and when E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition from their IJV partner has a positive impact on their financial performance. Based on data collected from 127 Thai manufacturing firms with a local IJV partnered with an advanced overseas firm, our results reveal that E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition from their IJV partner has an overall positive influence on their financial performance in terms of growth and profitability. Our results further show that innovation performance mediates the relationship between E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition and their financial performance based on a moderated mediation analysis including innovation performance as a mediator and absorptive capacity as a moderator. It is also found that the positive mediation effect of innovation performance is more pronounced in the presence of higher absorptive capacity than otherwise. That is, our results show that even among E-E firms which have acquired much knowledge from their IJV partner, those with higher absorptive capacity achieve better innovation performance than those with lower absorptive capacity, and improved innovation performance subsequently contributes to producing superior financial performance. The key conclusions, implications, and limitations of our study are presented based on these findings.

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