IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v28y2014i1p49-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Management Practices, Relational Contracts, and the Decline of General Motors

Author

Listed:
  • Susan Helper
  • Rebecca Henderson

Abstract

General Motors was once regarded as the best-managed and most successful firm in the world. However, between 1980 and 2009, GM's US market share fell from 46 to 20 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. We argue that the conventional explanation for this decline?namely high legacy labor and healthcare costs?is seriously incomplete, and that GM's share collapsed for many of the same reasons that many highly successful American firms of the 1960s were forced from the market, including a failure to understand the nature of the competition they faced and an inability to respond effectively once they did. We focus particularly on the problems GM encountered in developing the relational contracts essential to modern design and manufacturing, and we discuss a number of possible causes for these difficulties. We suggest that GM's experience may have important implications for our understanding of the role of management in the modern, knowledge-based firm and for the potential revival of manufacturing in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Helper & Rebecca Henderson, 2014. "Management Practices, Relational Contracts, and the Decline of General Motors," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 49-72, Winter.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:28:y:2014:i:1:p:49-72
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.28.1.49
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.28.1.49
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Akerlof, George A, 1984. "Gift Exchange and Efficiency-Wage Theory: Four Views," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 79-83, May.
    2. Jin Li & Niko Matouschek, 2013. "Managing Conflicts in Relational Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2328-2351, October.
    3. Marvin B. Lieberman & Shigeru Asaba, 1997. "Inventory Reduction and Productivity Growth: A Comparison of Japanese and US Automotive Sectors," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 73-85.
    4. Marina Halac, 2012. "Relational Contracts and the Value of Relationships," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 750-779, April.
    5. Helper, Susan & Levine, David I, 1992. "Long-Term Supplier Relations and Product-Market Structure," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 561-581, October.
    6. Susan Helper, 2011. "Challenge and opportunity in the U.S. auto industry: the key role of suppliers," ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2011(2), pages 51-68.
    7. Sylvain Chassang, 2010. "Building Routines: Learning, Cooperation, and the Dynamics of Incomplete Relational Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 448-465, March.
    8. Simon Board, 2011. "Relational Contracts and the Value of Loyalty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3349-3367, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:eee:jomega:v:73:y:2017:i:c:p:29-36 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jean Guillaume Forand & Jan Zapal, 2017. "The Demand and Supply of Favours in Dynamic Relationships," Working Papers 1705, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2017.
    3. Kukharskyy, Bohdan, 2016. "Relational contracts and global sourcing," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 123-147.
    4. Steven Blader & Claudine Gartenberg & Andrea Prat, 2016. "The Contingent Effect of Management Practices," Natural Field Experiments 00553, The Field Experiments Website.
    5. Englmaier, Florian & Segal, Carmit, 2016. "Morale, Relationships, and Wages: An Experimental Study," Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145662, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Kukharskyy, Bohdan, 2015. "Relational contracts and global sourcing," University of Tuebingen Working Papers in Economics and Finance 83, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.
    7. Steven Blader & Claudine Gartenberg & Rebecca Henderson & Andrea Prat, 2015. "The Real Effects of Relational Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 452-456, May.
    8. GIL, Ricard & KIM, Myongjim & ZANARONE, Giorgio, 2016. "The Value of Relational Adaptation in Outsourcing: Evidence from the 2008 shock to the US Airline Industry," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-32, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General
    • L62 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Automobiles; Other Transportation Equipment; Related Parts and Equipment
    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:28:y:2014:i:1:p:49-72. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jane Voros) or (Michael P. Albert). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.