집단인식체제의 인식역량과 투자 그리고 정책제언: 자동차업계의 미래차 투자를 중심으로

Abstract

Recently, the automobile industry has been encountering disruptive changes on various levels. On the one hand, there has been rising demand worldwide to increase electrified vehicle production in response to climate change. On the other hand, there are also more calls for the production of autonomous vehicles, which have already increased in numbers owing to ICT development. As a result, global automobile OEMs as well as their subcontractors are expanding R&D spending and facility investments despite the uncertainty of profitability. However, regarding the factors of investment, there are differences of opinion between two schools of thought: the standard view of economics and non-standard institutional view. According to the standard economic view such as that of Keynes’, investment is motivated by “animal spirits” or in other words, realized by the pursuit of profit. Both interest rates and anticipated return rates are critical factors in investment decision-making. When companies have to render decisions among several investment projects, marginal investment efficiency, which is decided by each project’s anticipated return rate and interest rate, becomes the main factor. On the contrary, the conventionalist from one of the institutional schools of economics thinks differently. According to this school of thought, investment is affected by the collective cognition capacity of the production system, which includes the manufacturing firm as well as the related subcontractors. In this study, we attempt to analyze the actual investment process according to the conventional school of economics view. From this perspective, economic behavior is carried out with a restrained rationality that is influenced by insufficiency and asymmetry of information. Investment behavior follows the similar process of economic behavior, which is realized under the limited information and restrained cognitive capacity. Success of investment relies on both collective cognitive capacity and differing views within and out of the firms on overall investment projects including funds, future return anticipation. Recently, KAMA conducted research on the status of investment in future vehicles actualized by Korean firms. In this study, we confirm our hypotheses by using these research results and interviews with high position CEOs of major automobile companies operating in Korea.