Time: 10:00 – 10:45 am Friday 5th Feb., 2021
Join Zoom Meeting: https://eng-cam.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 868 9903 1301
Passcode: 577915
Topic: Revisiting Ferdows’ and Shi-Gregory’s models in the digital era
“The seminal typologies of plant roles proposed by Ferdows (1997) and IMNs – International Manufacturing Networks – by Shi and Gregory (1997) remain as benchmarks until current days. Although they have been tested and enhanced, there is need to revisit them in the light of the impacts of digital technologies on the organization of industries in general and on international operations management in particular. Digital technologies enable radical changes in the ways that multinationals establish their geographical configuration (through relocation), coordination modes (through functional integration) and plant roles (through servitization). So, we ask if there are new emergent patterns already? We address that question through a particular perspective: how are multinationals changing the organization of their subsidiaries in a given country? For the analysis, we built a framework derived from the literature on digital strategies and digital transformation journeys. That framework was applied in the study of six Brazilian business units of four well known manufacturing multinationals. Despite the limitations of the field research (there are no claims for generalization), the findings disclose new patterns of IMNs’ digital transformation and trends for the future. Those findings allowed us to propose revisions to both Ferdows` and Shi-Gregory`s typologies.”
