A NEW YEAR OF NETWORKING

A very happy New Year from GERPISA. 2001 may have been associated in some people's mind with a space odyssey, but there is little doubt that it is road travel which will continue to dominate the headlines in the year 2002.

Next June's conference will be the GERPISA's 10th International Meeting. Starting in 1993 with our first international colloquium Emergence of new industrial models, the network's annual colloquium allows researchers from all across the world with interests in the automobile industry and its employees to get together regularly so as to present and discuss their work, update their knowledge base and modify their thinking processes by integrating colleagues' contributions and by defining new directions for reflection. For the past 10 years, the meeting has unerringly attracted participants from all four corners of the world. Yet even if it is the high point of the GERPISA international network's annual calendar, it remains that this colloquium only takes place once a year. It is part of a project-based approach whose purpose is to develop collective research - this being a pre-condition if our network is to survive in the long run.

Our next get-together will be the final chapter in the GERPISA research programme that was launched thanks to the kind support of the European Commission's CoCKEAS project, which runs out in September 2002. Given all of the ongoing reconfigurations in the world automobile sector, the co-ordination of competencies and knowledge within firms and between the system's various components is crucial indeed. Topics for discussion will include an approach that focuses on the European automobile system; the singular nature of Europe's automobile industry as opposed to that which can be found in the world's other regions; Europe's propensity for developing modes of co-operations between the various actors in its system; the emergence and performance of a European model (particularly with respect to the employment relationship it embodies; inter-firm relationships; and financialisation).

With all of the responses sent in following our recent call for communications, June's debates are sure to be extremely interesting. Afterwards we will begin a discussion on the issues, conditions and forms that will be orienting the continuation of our network's scientific efforts (i.e., what sort of scientific programme should we be pursuing ?)