'A strategy of the last resort'? Reflections on the role of the subcontract in the United Kingdom

In this paper I utilize a sub-national survey of subcontracting in a sample of manufacturing firms to comment on the changing nature of the subcontract in the UK. The survey indicates that, far from the subcontract emerging as a pivotal part of industrial organization, as some current debates suggest, it remains, for many companies, a 'strategy of the last resort'. I generalize the findings in order to speculate on the future for the subcontract relation in the UK.