Russia's Integration to the Globalized Automotive System: Solutions Adopted by Multinationals and Impact on the Local Industrial Environment

Abstract

The automotive industry has reached a very high level of international integration. It expanded in Russia at the end of the first decade of the century. The paper aims at describing the problems encountered in the first years of the process and how car manufacturers and their suppliers have evolved and adapted over a period of almost 10 years. Using a qualitative inductive methodology, based on interviews of Western European and Russian participants to the expansion, and using a case of failure as an extreme situation, the author identifies a certain number of influencing factors and describes how they have evolved trough the years. Finally, the paper concentrates on two phenomena that need more investigation, i.e. the reason for a small representation of Russian suppliers and the generic subculture of Russians working for foreign corporations. The results provide also a model of the implantation process on a new market that can be used for further research or to train and support managers involved in international projects.

Keywords

• russia
• automotive
• management
• globalization
• suppliers
• business culture