Local supplying companies and spillover effects in the brazilian automotive industry

Abstract

This study’s aim is to verify if the presence of an automotive assembling company contributes to the occurrence of spillovers in the form of product or process innovation to local supplying companies. The research method implemented was the multiple case study. Results indicate that relationships involving higher levels of commitment, cooperation and information exchange between local supplying companies and the assembling company contribute to the spillover occurrence in the form of product and process innovation, observed mainly for autonomous-link and constrained-link buyer-supplier relationships, and less intensively in market and power buyer-supplier relationships. Our findings contribute to the literature on spillovers from MNEs and have valuable implications for both research and practice. We attribute the paper’s contribution mainly to the in-depth nature of analyzes and the methodology employed, which gave us the detail and richness that are presumably associated with the complexity of the phenomena. For academics, this research provides a theoretical framework that has not been previously applied to the Brazilian automotive industry context.