Impact of the changing facets of inter‐firm interactions on manufacturing excellence: A social network perspective of the Indian automotive industry

Abstract

Summary This paper studies the vertical relational structure of automotive and auto component firms in the Indian automotive supply chain where a clear ‘unequal balance of power’ is observed. This is done by combining the theories of network and systemic idea of innovation. We uncover the hidden relational structure of the automotive and auto component firms and find that the industry network shows some prominent scale‐free structural properties indicating the existence of a typical dependence and dominance structure with complex dynamical behaviour. We also draw the innovation and sustainability characteristics of the firms’ network and their inclination towards vulnerability and some related policy implications.