Nouvelles du Programme - Jean-Claude Monnet

Wherein Constructors and Researchers Ponder the Notion of Model

I would simply like to address the issues of a "tension" existing between constructors and researchers which corresponds to a much too rapid modelizing form.

The constructor is interested in learning from comparative approaches dealing with the dynamics of both his/her competitors and his/her own evolution. Constructors lay special emphasis on describing and analyzing genuine changes by looking to "first-hand" on the field studies; thus, they find themselves in an original apprenticeship situation and play a three-fold role : that of financial contributor to the particular activity and functioning, as well as to the international network program, that of program "client", and finally - albeit a modest role - that of co-producer of knowledge.

Researchers, voluntarily associated with the network interested in scientific issues and projects (the industrial model and/or models), are more or less essentially motivated by publishing quality academic material.

Hence, on the one hand, researchers consider the automobile as a privileged field of investigation capable of furnishing new knowledge regarding the notion of the industrial model. On the other hand, however, the constructor is not interested in the notion of model unless it can explain to him/her the final results of different strategies, their successes and failures, and more generally, only if the model can shed considerable light on both today and tomorrow's challenges for the automobile industry.

Without a doubt, GERPISA's program studies offer the most original contribution within its "structural and historical" analysis of different constructors choices.

How did each constructor attempt to resolve problems encountered ? Which solutions were adopted, what is the degree of coherence between each applied change, what degree of pertinence with regards to evolutions in demand, competition, and/or labor?

What lessons are to be learned (or not) from subsequent failures and/or successes? What are respective apprenticeship capacities?

Above all, what is the predictive capacity of the model approach, and what can it legitimately say regarding the future of each constructor in light of their respective past choices?

Instead of simply serving as an additional critique of the IMVP program (whose lesser merit is to not have underlined gaps in quantified results existing between Japanese, American, and European constructors - even if absolute values are open to discussion), the qualitative approach of GERPISA's program should also allow us to better comprehend the reasons for these differences, in underlining the influence of historical and structural conditions required for the achievement of results for everyone.