Innovation and knowledge driven by a focal corporation: The case of the AutoEuropa supply chain

It seems that TNC value chains are concentrated in most successful regions, while TNC production externalization in least developed regions is mainly driven by cost-cutting rather than collaborative production arrangements. However, the stereotype of the plundering of regional resources by foreign capital seems, in many cases, to belong to the past (Dicken et al., 1994; Malmberg and Maskell, 1997). Globalization increasingly strengthens firm interdependencies. According to Veltz (1996), in a paradoxical way globalization reinforces firm and territorial interdependencies, when it had been expected that in a wider economic system firms would become freer as far as space is concerned. According to Maskell and Malmberg (1999), as globalization proceeds, important location factors are becoming ubiquitous. These authors argue that formerly localized inputs are being converted into ubiquitous features, for example: large domestic markets lose relevance when transport costs are negligible, trade barriers are removed and global products undermine customer loyalty to local or regional suppliers; the acquisition of efficient technology abroad at basically the same cost is a factor which reduces the role of local machinery producers; access to concepts of how industry should be organized reduces the significance of the traditional innovative background of industrial districts. Along with the process of globalization there has been an increase in the codification of knowledge, and as a result firms located outside the innovative region have easier access to new knowledge, which is created through the accumulation of bits of previous knowledge and R&D efforts (Antonelli, 2000). In this sense, firms should sustain thei