Abstract

What forms of interfirm exchanges take place among the regional branches and subsidiaries of traditional automobile-makers? The emergence of the Japanese (and American) just-in-time paradigm has, along with a shift between 1990 and 2010 in this global industry’s geopolitics, spawned questions about the productive efficiency and competitiveness of traditional automakers since the end of the 1980s. These questions mostly revolve around interfirm exchanges, as currently illustrated by the automobile industry in Alsace and Franche-Comté, eastern France. Government actions and local initiatives (examined in the light of practices in this region) help us imagine the institutional trajectories between the promotion of an industry of “excellence” and forms of transactions inherited from past institutions.