Proposta de um arcabouço analítico na perspectiva institucional para avaliar as implicações dos PAs para o desempenho em inovação de empresas multinacionais em países emergentes: foco no setor automobilístico

Abstract

The uncertainties in the current market stemming from environmental turbulences and highly globalized and complex relations make multinational companies establish multiple alliances to support their competitive advantage. These multiple alliances are made up of networks or alliances. Simultaneously, the capacity to innovate becomes imperative, so as to assure a competitive differential, enabling companies to adopt innovation-oriented strategies. The world auto industry is characterized by great technological advances and successfully represents the new ways of relationship and operation between companies taking part in the same relationship network, including alliances. The management of the supply chain through these new organizational arrangements is representative of innovations in the sector where companies seek more competitiveness. The car companies, which are multinationals, depend on the expertise of their partners to develop and deliver innovative products to consumers, thus rendering it necessary to share information, resources, products and services in the entire portfolio/alliance network. In order for this flow to happen in the best way possible, it is necessary that the company develop the structure for governance and the capacity to learn. Multinationals of the auto industry are global companies, which are present in several different countries and are subject to different institutional pressures. So as to keep their competitive advantage, companies must comprehend and follow the local norms, identifying institutional mechanisms. Since it is a sector made up of alliance portfolios, the industry has a strong economic chain that has impact on the social and economic systems of the country, becoming responsible for a large number of jobs, tax collection and the strengthening of the credit market.From this scenario, the final objective of the research developed is: To propose an analytical framework which can help executives from multinational companies in emerging countries, from the auto sector, strategically guided to innovation, to analyse and to manage their alliance portfolios aiming to contribute for the performance in innovation, considering their institutional specificities. To reach such goal, a literary review encompassing the main theories related to the theme was conducted: The theories of networks, the institutional and that of alliance portfolios aiming to verify their impact on the innovation performance of multinational companies.The proposed framework is a variation of the SNA-IF model from Macedo-Soares (2015) to which we added indicators related with the institutional context and specific to the case of multinational companies from the auto industry in emerging countries. The adopted method was the multiple case study, involving two international car companies with factories in Brazil. To choose them, an analysis of the strategic groups was carried out, using the factor analysis, in which three groups were identified. For the case study, one company from each of the two more relevant groups was chosen. Using multiple sources of evidence, such as documental analysis and an examination of structured questionnaires, the SNA-IF_Institution Version framework was consolidated. The results from the empirical research prove the adequacy of applying the SNA-IF_Institution Version framework in order to provide elements that can help executives from the auto industry to analyze and manage their portfolios of alliances so as to contribute to the innovation performance, in face of their institutional specificities.