The Automobile Industry’s Innovation in Periphery Countries: Territorial Management of Resistance to Change

For 30 years new car-building countries have developped in the immediate periphery of the main world regions, e.g. Spain, Mexico, the Czech Republic or Turkey. The products assembled in these new spaces are usually very innovative and originate in pioneering organisation processes. The existence of such organisational innovations in periphery countries does not fit well in with traditional economic theories of international specialization. On the other hand, it is more comprehensible when related to the insurance aspects of manufacturers’ territorial strategies. In fact car manufacturers find in periphery countries the favourable terms for the radical organisational changes which they seek to implement and which, by attacking professional statutes and by scrambling institutional frames, would lead to a clash with central factories workforce.