After the Current Programme

Two of the four international working groups met at the beginning of March: the "Trajectories" group in Berlin, and the "Production Organization" group in Lyon. The two other groups will meet at the end of April. The books being prepared are developing well. The four manuscripts must be almost ready by the time of the 3rd International Meetings in June.

As you will note on the adjoining page, the dates of the meeting have had to be set back by one day. The Poincaré amphitheatre at the Ministry for Higher Education and Research is unavailable on the 14th of June. The international meetings will therefore take place, as last year, on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the 15th, 16th and 17th of June. The meeting of the International Steering Committee will therefore take place on Wednesday 14th at the Maison Suger, rather than Saturday 17th as initially planned.

The meetings in Berlin and Lyon confirmed that the members of the network share an interest in pursuing and developing their international cooperation, in the same spirit that the current programme has generated. Several proposals have been put forward.

The first is to launch the new programme on 1st January 1996. To do so, a project proposal would have to be presented to the European Union before 15th June. This project, which was already being discussed, but now has developed in more detail, would involve prolonging the current programme by tracing and analysing the trajectories of automobile groups (parent and subsidiaries) and of their suppliers in the context of the increased internationalization of exchange and the creation of regional markets. The globalization currently under way at these firms, or at least at some of them, in fact raises the question of whether they can maintain the current heterogeneity of their production organization in this new context. The advantage of this proposal is that it follows on closely from the current work, while broadening it to subsidiaries and suppliers. But it is precisely this aspect which puts off several members of the network, seeing in it too great a step away from their field work.

The second proposal is to consider several connected themes in a multi-polar programme, in which each of us could focus on his/her interests. Each member of the network would be asked to describe their research plans. From this could be constructed a multi-thematic programme. So far this idea has met with scepticism. To really mobilize our energies, there must be an intellectual project, and that requires a certain unity.

The third proposition, perhaps the wisest, would be to devote the year 1996 to making the work undertaken (particularly the books published) during the last four years better known and to preparing a new programme. In June or October 1996 we could organize a "Euroconference", in part financed by the European TMR programme. Our conclusions would thus be presented to a wider audience and compared to other research paradigms. Simultaneously, we could take the time to develop a new project which could be submitted to TMR in June 1996.

The debate is open. Each one of us can make his/her own ideas and suggestions known.

Index of number 92 ;
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