Relationships as mechanisms for the co-ordination of capabilities in the portuguese industry of moulds

Abstract

New perspectives arose of recently about the division of work in industry and the coordinating mechanisms thereof (Langlois and Robertson, 1995). This paper looks at the coordination of activities and division of work in industry from the industrial networks perspective. Both the notion of relationships between firms, seen as co-ordinating mechanisms (Axelsson and Easton, 1992) and joint learning devices (Håkansson, 1993) , and the notion of firms as sets of direct and indirect capabilities (Loasby, 1998a, 1998b) are used in order to characterise and contrast the trajectories (development paths) of four firms from the Portuguese industry of moulds for plastic injection