ABSTRACT
The 1980s have been a time of economic turbulence, intensified competition and technological transformation in all advanced economies. One of the responses to the increased uncertainty and heightened risks has been a strategy, on the part of large firms, to externalize more production and design tasks, leading to what has been termed a new division of labour between firms. The study of the changing relationship between large buyer companies and the predominantly small and medium-sized supplier enterprises (SMEs) is approached in both an historical and a comparative manner. The paper outlines the historical development of industrial structure and organization in Germany, Britain and France and examines the impact of historical formations on current transformations. It places great weight on the way in which firms have been embedded in, and shaped by, their social institutional and political environment. Particular attention is given to the different ways in which firms have been mobilizing the resources and services they need. The interaction of industrial organization with such local or national environments is characterized, in the terms of Herrigel (1989), as an ‘industrial order’. It is shown how the historically evolved industrial orders have influenced the technological and organizational competences of both large and SMEs and how this, in turn, has shaped the relationship between the two types of firm. Variations in industrial order within a society between regions/industries are acknowledged, but such diversity is not seen as precluding the elaboration of national patterns. It is argued that, due to fundamental differences in industrial order between Germany, France and Britain, divergence in current national patterns of industrial re-organization has remained more pronounced than any convergence, following from the experience of common exposure to economic and political (from the EEC) pressures. A common experience of the high incidence and fast pace of industrial restructuring should not divert attention from the high degree of continuity and even conservatism within this seemingly radical transformation.
