Foreword to "Geely drives out"

Résumé:

This book is the result of a long-term collective effort. As the director of the Gerpisa network of research I have witnessed the evolution of this work from international colloquium to international colloquium. I am now delighted to see that it has grown into a remarkable book. The rich and multidimensional analysis of the Chinese carmaker Geely presented in these pages will be of great value for all researchers and practitioners interested in the current major transformations of the global automotive sector. During this period Geely has become the most important privately owned Chinese carmaker and one of the fastest growing transnational players in this extremely competitive industry, notably through the successful acquisition of Volvo in 2010 and the more recently entry in the capital of Daimler. By unpacking and explaining the different factors that have contributed to this successful trajectory, the book makes a key contribution to the study of the “new frontiers of the automotive industry” that we have put at the core of our last international programme of research .

Nevertheless, it would not make justice to this book to say that it is “just” about Geely. Through the prism of this surprisingly resourceful company, which in less than twenty years has moved from the production of fridges to become the 13th global carmaker by volume of production, Hua Wang, Giovanni Balcet and Wenxian Zhang cast a new light on a wide array of crucial topics in industrial economics and managerial studies that span well beyond the automotive sector. The list is long and the book makes a really good job in highlighting how each chapter contributes both theoretically and empirically to different fields of research and key research questions. I would like here to focus on at least some of them.