| La lettre du GERPISA | no 103 (mai 1996) |
Editorial - Michel Freyssenet
The first program emanated from two pragmatic principles: gather up the necessary finances in order to hold reunions and international encounters, each network member financing out of his/her own pocket the time needed and eventually work accomplished which corresponds to his program contribution. Indeed, GERPISA has never tried to act as a super-research laboratory centralizing all studies on the automobile. The aforementioned principles allowed us to benefit from flexible functioning and low-key organizational needs corresponding to what we could reasonably expect in 1992.
Hence, we were able to share a large amount of research carried out in the realm of the automobile industry throughout the world. Each of us was able to benefit from information useful in responding to the diverse questions we ask ourselves. From then on, we were then able to establish new interpretative schemas. However, we were unable to go as far as desired in the realm of comparative studies focusing on several precise points which are important for our general reasoning; for example, the evolution of commercial variety, industrial flexibility, quality, production costs, worker formulas, etc. Very quickly, we encountered limits due to the time and money that each of us could devote to his/her specific studies.
The idea for the second program is that these specific studies form the basis of research contracts established with different institutions. General consultation has pointed to the fact that such possibilities do exist, especially with several European organisms. These contracts would be established in the name of GERPISA, and those responsible for its application would be scientific researchers who would have conceived of the contract's content based on a commonly-adopted program. These same individuals would then be responsible for carrying out this project.