Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

AUTOMOTIVE REFERENCES LITERATUR COMPANIES GO EAST -
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA
to large companies. The automotive supply
chain and its hierarchy can be illustrated with
a pyramid.
Figure 1. Automotive Supplier Hierarchy
(by author)
If it was a simple and successful story, it could
be followed by reports of continuous growth,
expansions, and developments of new markets.
Automobiles would be the main transportation
means, the OEM portfolio would become
increasingly diversified, and automobiles in
nearly all price classes would be offered. There
would be mainly growth prospects for
companies in the automotive sector
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for OEM and the supply industry. As
one can imagine, considering the many
countries and regions in the world
that are still not saturated as far as individual
transport (by car) is concerned, OEMs and
supplier companies would be “lucky devils” in
the era of globalization. Indeed, all that is partly
true, yet accompanied by other developments
and mechanisms:
International production- and distribution
strategies of the large multinational OEMs
are constitutive for all other entrepreneurial
decisions in this sector. Internationalization
and an extensive process of consolidation have
taken place simultaneously since the 1990s –
for the Original Equipment Manufacturers
(OEM) as well as for supplier companies. This
process produces “mega suppliers” as a result
of fusions and takeovers and the reduction
of the in-house production depth on the