Emerging positions of German firms in the industrial internet of things
Subtitle
A global technological ecosystem perspective
Publication date
2022-06-25
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Organisational unit
ISSN
Series or journal
Global networks
Periodical volume
22
Periodical issue
4
First page
666
Last page
683
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Keyword
Digital industrial policy
Digital sovereignty
German industry
Global technological ecosystems
Global value chains
Online platforms
The industrial internet of things (IIoT)
Abstract
The industrial internet of things (IIoT) has created entirely new inter-firm competitive and collaborative dynamics that focus on the supply of digital infrastructures, services and platforms for industrial users. These dynamics typically involve machinery builders, information technology suppliers and traditional technology buyers from various asset-intensive sectors. Given the global character of IIoT technology, transnationally relevant inter-firm arrangements have emerged for which we still lack a conceptually grounded understanding. This study addresses this research gap from the German perspective by combining the concepts of global value chains and complex technical systems. Empirically, we develop a multiple case study of established German firms that have provided IIoT technologies in the domain of ‘smart manufacturing.’ We investigate the firms’ evolving positions within the multi-layered IIoT stack and explore their technological dependency on global cloud-infrastructure suppliers. Second, we put the case study into the context of the recent German industrial-policy initiatives related to the discourse of ‘digital sovereignty’, which attempt to improve the positions of domestic actors vis-à-vis the multi-national tech companies. Conceptually, this study offers the framework of global technological ecosystems as a new perspective on the transnational platform economy, which highlights the enabling character of global-scale digital infrastructures and acknowledges active involvement of non-firm actors in ecosystem governance.
Description
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Version
Published version
Access right on openHSU
Metadata only access