In-house production versus specific forms of supplier governance: Testing predictions of the global value chains model

Carmakers interact in their supply chain with virtually all manufacturing industries. Using a novel dataset on sourcing transactions that contains links between buyers and suppliers for sourcing contracts of individual components, we show that multiple forms of relationship governance can coexist within a single industry. We first show that three characteristics of transactions that have been used to rationalise observed sourcing patterns in the global value chains (GVC) literature - complexity, codifiability and supplier capability - also predict whether components are outsourced or not. More importantly, the same characteristics help explain how carmakers choose to structure supply relationships differently depending on the situation. Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.