期刊名称：She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
印刷版ISSN：2405-8726
出版年度：2016
卷号：2
期号：3
页码：183-198
DOI：10.1016/j.sheji.2016.11.001
语种：English
出版社：Elsevier
摘要：Abstract This research is an applied case study of the 2009 General Motors bailout using John Heskett’s economics as a starting point for analysis. In 1993, Heskett (1937–2014) wrote in International Design that GM’s myopic design vision at the corporate strategy level led to the company’s stagnation and an inability to compete. Professor Heskett had not only captured GM’s competitive position at the time—he had foretold its future decline. Shortly after that article was published, GM declared losses of $23 billion—the largest in US corporate history. In 2009, despite accumulated losses totaling $35 billion, GM was bailed out and nationalized by the US government in another unprecedented event. Through the lens of the GM bailout, this article examines Heskett’s critique of mainstream economics and uses his research into institutional economics and the national system to help define the rent-seeking asset regime that led to the GM bailout. Key observations will benefit firm management, policy-makers, and those interested in political economics from an historical and institutional point of view. Highlights • John Heskett writing in 1993 found that GM’s myopic production-oriented design vision does not create value through creative destruction as does the user-oriented corporate strategy practiced by GM’s foreign competitors. • The same year GM suffered the largest corporate loss in US history. • Heskett’s writings integrate his design-oriented theory of value into the history of economics and shows how the national system and institutionalism are necessary to understand the complex nature of value-creation through creative destruction. • Our research uses GM as a case study to show the validity of Heskett’s claims in retrospect, especially in the political economy leading to the GM bailout / nationalization in 2009. • Heskett’s writings on economics and value-creation provide lessons for those interested in growth-oriented public policy, theory of the firm, management strategy and design-entrepreneurship.
关键词：General Motors;Institutional economics;Design as strategy;Asset specificity;Rent-seeking;Creative destruction;Economic nationalism
