Varieties of Vertical Disintegration: The Global Trend Toward Heterogeneous Supply Relations and the Reproduction of Difference in US and German Manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract As is well known, there is a global trend toward vertical disintegration in many manufacturing industries. Large manufacturing firms are radically reducing the amount of their product that they both produce and design themselves. Instead they are turning to suppliers for key design, component, and even system inputs. This shift has created a great deal of business for specialized suppliers in a vast array of areas throughout the global manufacturing economy. But it has also created an entirely new and challenging-often quite contradictory-terrain of relations between suppliers and their customers. Our claim in this chapter is that relations between suppliers and customers in manufacturing are becoming systematically more heterogeneous within all advanced industrial societies.