مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

The combination of local public support with foreign direct investment (FDI) through an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) establishment is expected to lead to job generation, capacity building and economic growth. Benefits arising from OEM establishment go beyond the obvious direct effects on employment and income tax collection. Evidence from examples such as Australia (Caves, 1974), Canada (Globerman, 1979) and Mexico (Blomström and Persson, 1983) show that FDI can enhance domestic manufacturing firms’ performance through standards implementation and information sharing between the domestic plants and foreign firms. However, in some cases, such as Venezuela, technology spillovers from FDI are far from expected (Aitken and Harrison, 1999). Aitken and Harrison (1999) inferred that this might be the result of low foreign investment or because Venezuela’s economy is not developed or diversified enough to benefit from foreign companies. Additionally, Borensztein et al. (1998) provided evidence that FDI benefits are dependent on the absorptive capacity of the host country, measured by human capital available in the host economy.

Processes related with diversification and industrial specialisation are complex and uncertain, involving the incorporation of knowledge and technology in people and organisations (Conceição et al., 1998; Conceição et al., 2003; Heitor and Bravo, 2010; Sheffi, 2005). Moreover, shifts towards modular production, associated with the entrenchment of global supply chains has added pressure to cut down costs, which represents challenging obstacles in the creation of higher-level local suppliers (Fine, 1998). This is particularly true in the automotive sector, where supply chains involve a large number of participants that must work together and coordinate their activities in order to ensure the successful final assembly of the automobile. Thus, creating and developing the necessary knowledge base to integrate this competitive industry takes several years of continued investment and cumulative capacity (Kim, 2001).

Governments’ support and targeted policies might help to create, develop and accumulate technological capacity, fostering economic competitiveness and reducing socioeconomic vulnerability. Nevertheless, the boundaries and limits of public intervention remain a key issue in many political systems worldwide (e.g. Mazzucato, 2013). This is clearly a critical question in socio-technical research. Therefore, in this article, we explore the key conditions and agents necessary to foster technological spillovers through OEM establishment. The analysis carried out herein considers the automotive industry since it induces the development of high value-added chains with a multiplier effect on the economy, crosses several areas of knowledge, deals with a multiplicity of technologies, skills and organisational processes (Pavlínek and ŽiŽalová, ۲۰۱۴).