In recent decades, networks of financially-independent companies located around the world have come to account for an increasing share of global production. These global value chains operate differently from other models of production, such as the export of finished products made largely in a...

The study examines US-European productivity and worker attitude differences, focusing on changes in incentive structures. We analyze productivity and worker attitudes in five plants in the UK and US belonging to the same multinational producer of automotive sensors and actuators. We examine the...

Economists have often argued that "pay for performance" is the optimal compensation scheme. However, use of the simplest form of pay for performance, the piece rate, has been in decline in manufacturing in recent decades. We show both theoretically and empirically that these changes are due to...

General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline -...

The questions addressed in this volume are motivated by the recognition that engineers play an important role in generating innovation and economic growth. In this chapter, we seek to offer some description of engineering work by looking in detail at a specific manufacturing industry—firms...

We develop a framework linking organizational and industry architectures to value creation and value capture, and apply it to the case of Industry 4.0 (the coordinated use of digitally-enabled technologies like robots, sensors, and artificial intelligence) in the automotive industry. We argue...