Sources of knowledge for innovation in automotive component manufacturing in South Africa, China and India

This paper investigates to which extent the scope and degree of novelty of innovation by automotive component manufacturers in developing countries is associated with the scope of sources of knowledge used. The literature indicates a positive association between these parameters in the developed country context. However, it is not evident that in the developing country environment the same associations exist. Potential causes include market composition and institutional conditions. The data was obtained from a questionnaire survey amongst automotive component manufacturers in South Africa, China and India. Some 500 responses were analyzed by association testing. For firms in South Africa no association was found between the diversity of sources of knowledge and diversity of impact of innovation. In the case of the firms in China the association was found for local and domestic sources of knowledge. In the case of firms in India, an association was found for local sources of knowledge. While in the case of South Africa the lack of association between the diversity of sources of knowledge related to local, domestic and international sources and innovation degree of novelty appear anomalous, it has to be understood within an institutional context that favors dependency on multinational parent companies rather than indigenous technological innovation based on accessing a broad range of sources of knowledge.