The automotive industry in Sul Fluminense (RJ): an analysis of networks between automakers and suppliers

Abstract

Understanding the relationships between global firms is a challenge for socio- economic studies. In this work, our objective is to advance this issue, taking as an object the relationships between automakers in the automotive industry and their leading suppliers. Borrowing the theoretical model of Global Production Networks (GPN) and unifying it to the framework of the methods and assumptions of Social Network Analysis (SNA), the article offers a sociogram that describes the structures of supply relationships between some of the major firms located at the Sul Fluminense automotive hub, a hub located in southern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We rely on data for the year 2019, in the pre-pandemic period. The results,i.e. the description of this structure of relationships, suggest the confirmation of some theoretical postulates about the production strategies of the leading firms in this industry. More specifically, we evidence the occurrence of follow sourcing when suppliers follow the top firms in new ventures. In addition, we show how the suppliers are not very connected to each other and how most of them share the national and institutional origin of leading firm (in this case, the automakers). The main contribution of this paper is to pave the way for a new socio-economic research agenda on the automotive sector in Brazil, an agenda centered on a comparative and theoretically based analysis of supply chains.