Ruiz Garcia, Claudia (2015) Internal and external sources of capacity building in the Mexican auto-parts industry. Doctoral thesis (PhD), University of Sussex.

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Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the study of technology upgrading in late industrialising countries. This research aims to understand the process of technology upgrading of SMEs in the automotive industry by looking at the internal and external sources of technology for these firms. To do so, the main bodies of literature of this research are i) technological capabilities and absorptive capacity, ii) global value chains, and iii) NLSs.

Technology upgrading has not been a well-developed notion in the literature. The literature has focused on technical change in industrialised economies and it has omitted the process of incremental changes and the shortcomings existing in the system of innovation for late industrialising countries. To observe technology upgrading in developing countries, I look at the transfer of technology from up-to-date firms (assemblers) to the less knowledgeable firms (SMEs) and the assimilation of this technology by the latter. To look at other sources of technology, I observed the country’ context and the role of other actors in the industry. In this regard, National Learning Systems (NLSs) permit to understand and explain the differences of the process of technical change in late industrialising countries where they learnt through the diffusion of technology created somewhere else rather than the creation of it within the system. In this research, I offer new findings for the literature which has paid little attention to the process of technology upgrading and SMEs. I also confirm that the use of NLSs instead of NIS is more accurate for late industrialising countries and I offer new paths for future research in these issues.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Schools and Departments:	University of Sussex Business School > SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General) > F1203.49 Mexico H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labour > HD2350.8 Large industry. Factory system. Big business H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and communications > HE5601 Automotive transportation
Depositing User:	Library Cataloguing
Date Deposited:	11 May 2015 05:42
Last Modified:	28 Sep 2015 14:19
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/53947

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