Orchestrating the Many Individual Contributions

GERPISA's 9th international colloquium was an enriching experience. More than 180 persons, academics and practitionners participated, and new members arrived to present their work inside of the network. Nearly 50 papers are available on CD-ROM and complementary productions will soon be available on the GERPISA website.

With the wide range of countries and regions being discussed (North America, South America, the European Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Japan, Korea, China, Australia) and because of the introduction of certain topics that we had not previously delved into in any particular detail (distribution, marketing, e-commerce, design, recycling), we were able to open up the discussions in such a way as to hone in on the changes that have been taking place in the regional automobile systems.

The central theme of the colloquium Reconfiguring the auto industry: Merger & Acquisition, Alliances, and Exit highlighted the limitations of the merger and acquisition process and allowed us to better understand the co-operation processes that are at work in inter-carmaker alliances. The professionals who took part in this roundtable provided particularly interesting insights that subsequent presentations were able to build upon in their analyses of the (inter-)organisational learning dynamics that occur when carmakers set up new procedures to co-ordinate knowledge and competencies with one another.

On a vertical level (relationships between manufacturers and components makers), co-operation was discussed through the prism of developments relating to modular production. On one hand, it seems that the Japanese carmakers, who had been very reticent in this area, are starting down this road. On the other hand, it appears with hindsight that the earliest experiments, particularly in Brazil, have caused certain problems stemming from the implementation of modular production. These difficulties revolve around the relationships between the carmaker and the co-located suppliers, and arount the employment relationship. Financialisation may well have been the major issue in recent years (see the editorial in the Lettre n 152) but it would seem that the issue of labour might again become one of the main challenges for the car industry in the future.

Research into financialisation has been emphasising the extremely relative nature of the domination that the financial markets have been wielding. Moreover, although the creation of shareholder value is a constraint that executives have had to incorporate in their thinking, the market remains the ultimate sanction. It is when the economic environment is turning around that a company shows its ability to cope with these problems, as well as the appropriateness of its technological and organisational capabilities - capabilities that are borne by its organisation and by its employees.

As such, it is important that we fine-tune our study of the consequences of financialisation on the re-composition of corporate governance, and on productive organisation. Insofar as modular production basically originates in European industry, and given that national institutional environments have been specifying (in hybrid forms) the various ways in which the shareholder value logics that have come over from the United States are to be diffused, Europe may have a crucial role to play in whatever alchemy is likely to lead to the emergence of an industrial model that is original, and which can create some compatibility amongst profit strategies that had heretofore been mutually exclusive.

The studies presented at GERPSIA colloquium and at CoCKEAS workshops offer some elements of response to this question. It remains that we should assimilate these contributions and orchestrate them in order to have a clearer view of ongoing changes. Our 10th colloquium will be an opportunity to reopen this debate: it will be held on the 6, 7, and 8 June 2002 at the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris. Before that, the Venice and Berlin CoCKEAS workshops will be important stages for the progression of our collective thinking.