ABSTRACT

Many scholars agree that contemporary capitalism is undergoing profound transformations. In its earlier stages, nineteenth-century capitalism was undertaken by small, mono-product craft production factories operating in relative autonomy from other firms. Then through the twentieth century, capitalism became more complex. Markets were increasingly organised on national and international scales with the evolution of a new form of multinational corporate organisation – the multidivisional or M-form enterprise (Chandler 1977). Like the prototypical Ford Motor Company, such enterprises organised increasingly diverse facets of production. In the latter stages of the twentieth century, another transformation appeared to be underway. Revolutionary changes in information and communications technology are bringing about paradigmatic shifts in the scope and scale of business enterprise with the result that the variety and complexity of inter-firm, rather than intra-firm, relations have come to define innovation-intensive economic activity branded alliance capitalism (Gerlach 1992; Dunning 1995).