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Hyundai Case Study

Decent Essays
Asia Pacific Business Review Vol. 12, No. 2, 131–147, April 2006 Globalization and Employment Relations in the Korean Auto Industry: The Case of the Hyundai Motor Company in Korea, Canada and India RUSSELL D. LANSBURY*, SEUNG-HO KWON** & CHUNGSOK SUH† *University of Sydney, **School of International Business, University of New South Wales, † University of New South Wales ABSTRACT Examination is made of the complex interactions between globalization and employment relations as reflected in the operations of the Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) in Korea, Canada and India. After the closure of its short-lived attempt to manufacture cars for the North American market from Canada, the HMC ‘relaunched’ its globalization strategy in India…show more content…
By the mid 1980s, more than 50 per cent of total production was exported. A comparison of production and sales by Korean and Japanese auto companies in the early to mid 1990s is shown in Table 2. In 1992, the size of the Japanese domestic market was five times larger than that in Korea. During the early 1990s, however, the Japanese auto industry began to restructure in response to economic circumstances. By 1995, Japanese companies produced about 35 per cent of its global production through subsidiaries outside Japan. Their globalization strategy concentrated on expanding overseas production and coordinating components suppliers among various global production centres. In 1995, the proportion of exports to total domestic production in Korea was similar to that in Japan. Yet the globalization of the Korean auto industry focused mainly on exporting domestically produced vehicles until the mid 1990s. Although overseas production began to increase in the late 1990s, the proportion was still rather small and most production
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