Human resources and location of production in world car industry

Abstract

The spectacular evolution in recent years of the information and communicaction technologies has allowed the adoption of territorial strategies at the production chain in such industries. At first, the classic chain of linear value and monolocated has been removed from her structure. Later, it has been reconstructed over new bases, more dispersed and multilocated. In this paper we look for understand this process from a deep study of the world car industry, such an industrial sector where the logic of segmentation of the production and the advantage of differential characteristics of each context is one of the most effective strategic force. We focusses our analysis in the central rol exerted by the human resources - from the different levels of qualification and cost - as inducers of the guidelines of production spatial distribution in this sector and as determining factors for deffining strategies for its productive chain at world scale.