Suchergebnisse

In un quadro macro-economico caratterizzato da forti incertezze e tensioni internazionali, nel corso dell'ultimo anno l'industria automotive è stata colpita da una dinamica negativa generalizzata, sia sul fronte della domanda che su quello della produzione. Per quanto riguarda il settore italiano, il volume 2019 dell'Osservatorio propone la fotografia di una filiera automotive sull'orlo di una decrescita strutturale non facilmente reversibile. Tuttavia, dal quadro complessivo emergono alcuni possibili percorsi di sviluppo della componentistica, avviata verso un percorso virtuoso di diversificazione e internazionalizzazione, nella quale vanno favorite politiche per superare la dipendenza da FCA ed agevolare l'ampliamento del mix produttivo. Tali strategie necessitano di essere declinate tenendo conto delle specificità territoriali, che se valorizzate e sostenute da politiche puntuali e mirate, potrebbero diventare lo strumento per traghettare la filiera italiana verso il futuro dell'industria automotive.

This article uses a longitudinal qualitative analysis of key transitions in the relationship between Fiat Group Automobiles and a major supplier to integrate a pragmatist model of action into the contemporary "practice" approach to the study of organizations. It builds on an affinity between pragmatist and practice approaches that has been widely recognized but has not yet been fully developed with reference to an empirical case. It argues that an analytic reliance on a pragmatist conception of agency improves on the more general reliance in studies of organizational practice on a conception of the agent imported from Giddens' structuration theory [Giddens A (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK)]. The argument is developed with reference to a long-standing debate in organization theory—the debate over the determinants of organizational boundaries—that has grown in importance as companies have responded to market and technological volatility by involving suppliers not just in the production but also in the conceptualization and design of the products they sell. It provides a theoretical framework that can help analyze the place of managerial agency in organizational strategy making and explain why organizational boundaries in many industries today are so unsettled and contested and are likely to remain so in the future.

The nature of buyer‐supplier relationships has been closely linked to nation specific explanations and concern has been expressed in literature regarding the transferability of co‐design best practices to different firms and countries. On the other hand, many attempts to isolate best practices and to apply them on a global scale have been proposed in the literature. Contributes to the issue by analysing a controversial case study based on the Italian automotive industry. Results show that few aspects of the Japanese contextual features and American ones existed when the major Italian car maker decided to outsource component design and dramatically change its supply chain management approach. Moreover, despite the massive involvement of suppliers at a very early stage of the car maker new product development process, not all the best practices deemed to be necessary when implementing a co‐operative buyer‐supplier relationship have been applied. Argues that these results lead us to question the very nature of effective buyer‐supplier relationships as described by the dominant literature and suggests implications for practitioners and for future research.

The concept of organizational routine can foster our understanding of the behavior of organizations and of organizational change [Nelson, R.R., Winter, S.G., 1982. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Cambridge; March, J.G., Simon, H.A., 1958. Organizations. Blackwell, Oxford (1993); Cyert, R.M., March, J.G., 1963. A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Blackwell, Oxford (1992)], but since empirical studies employing organizational routines as analytical perspective are still relatively rare, how to conduct such an analysis and what are its benefits is not yet fully evident. We wish to shed light on how employing routines contributes to understanding the behavior of organizations and to demonstrate the potential of such analysis. The empirical analysis of the product development process at an engineering centre shows that using organizational routines presents advantages over alternative analytical approaches. The paper also contributes to shed light on how to fruitfully employ an organizational routines perspective in analyzing the behavior of organizations, providing the foundation for further empirical work.

The paper analyses the organization of the new product development process at FIAT from a resource‐based perspective. The focus is on organizational resources for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of complex products. The analysis shows how the application of a resource‐based perspective is able to uncover negative long‐term effects of outsourcing on the knowledge base (hollowing out), despite beneficial short‐term effects on cost.