LABOUR AND HISTORY: REBUILDING A BETTER FUTURE BY GOING BACK TO GERPISA'S BASICS?

The CoCKEAS project and the GERPISA's third international research programme will have helped us to further extend and consolidate new expertises within our international network. By focusing on the development of vertical relationships, this programme has displaced our centre of attention, moving it away from the automakers themselves (the heart of our first and second international programmes) and towards an analysis of the various relational forms that can arise between the manufactures and the suppliers who can be found within an automobile system. There is no question but that themes relating to the components making industry have led to a greater mobilisation of our network's members, including its geographical dimensions (special issues to be published in 2002 of International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management on "Redesigning the Automakers-Suppliers Relationships in the Automotive Industry", and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research on "The Changing Geography of the Automobile Production").

There has also been a new enthusiasm for the topic of "financialisation" and its effects on the automobile industry. The publication of a special issue of the review Competition and Change on "tyranny of finance?" attests to the wealth of studies that have been carried out on this theme within the framework of the CoCKEAS project, and under the supervision of Karel Williams. These studies have highlighted the limitations for automakers of this financialisation process, and recent events, specifically Ford's back-to-basics drive, remind us that however many business models actors come up with, there is no getting away from the fact that a productive model has to be coherent with its environment.

The GERPISA's 10th International Conference will be an opportunity to present and discuss all of these findings, and to criticise them collectively. The current issue of the Lettre du GERPISA is itself an attempt to go back-to-basics, meaning here back to the methodological dimensions that had contributed to the original structuring of the GERPISA network. Some of these dimensions may have been somewhat sidelined during our last programme - specifically our previous focus on employment relationships or on corporate history.

In terms of the work lying ahead, Juan José Castillo's contribution raises questions about the social sustainability of the new forms of work organisation, both in automakers' plants and also in the associated establishments being run by component and subsystem producing suppliers. An in-depth field study at the Navarra (Spain) Polo plant reveals that the situation has been worsening for the workers here. They have been coming under increased pressure as a result of the ever-greater involvement (quality) requirements and the (intensified) work rate with which they are having to cope at the same time as they are being destabilised by the insecurity that is a side effect of advances in flexibility. A sustainability concept might be a difficult one to define, but the contradictions that are building up will manifest themselves in one way or the other...

Regarding business history, 2003 corresponds to the Ford Motor Company's centennial year. A reconstitution of the history of Ford in Europe will occupy some of our network's members over the next few months, as part of a co-operative research effort that we have developed together with the American carmaker. This will be an opportunity to further our discussions on the forms and limitations of firms' internationalisation drives.

There is little doubt that all of these "basics" will be integrated more explicitly into the GERPISA's next international research programme. This programme will be developed in a collective manner. What we already know is that the GERPISA is going to lodge an "expression of interest" application with the European Commission, asking it to recognise us as a "network of excellence". This would allow us to delve into the "knowledge society" project from the point of view of the automobile industry.
 
 

Index of number 160 ;
All the Editorials in La Lettre du GERPISA ;
Avai lable numbers ;