Economic Change, Vertical Disintegration, and Buyer-Supplier Relations: Some Theoretical Considerations

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s, an intense debate has developed around the notion that core sectors of industry have been reorganizing production strategies associated with mass production (Jones and Scott, 1987; Lipietz, 1986; Lovering, 1988; Wood, 1989). In particular, it is argued that new forms of production organization are redefining the utilization of technologies and labour, underpinned by the development of new productive strategies aimed at serving a wider range of variagated and fragmented markets (Kelly, 1983; Marginson et al., 1988; Piore, 1986; Williams et al., 1987). While there is a vigorous debate concerning the meaning, nature and implications of changes in production organization, there is widespread consensus that fundamental changes are occurring in advanced capitalist societies (Cooke, 1989; Hakim, 1987; Handy, 1984; Harvey, 1988). In response to a period of economic turbulence, a number of researchers have attempted to develop key concepts to clarify and explain contemporary changes in industrial organization.