1,720,985 research outputs found
Between business interests and ideological marketing: The USSR and the cold war in fiat corporate strategy, 1957–1972
No full textThis article analyzes the landmark deal between the Italian automobile corporation Fiat and the Soviet government to build and operate the Volga Automobile Factory (VAZ). Drawing on formerly closed corporate records and declassified Soviet documents, the article traces how the Cold War helped shape the strategy of a West European multinational corporation in its attempts to manipulate the national and international political context in which it was acting. In Fiat's strategy toward the uncertain Soviet market, car production represented more of a bridgehead than an ultimate objective. Fiat's Ostpolitik was carefully planned and coordinated with the U.S. government and with other large Italian businesses. Italian-Soviet cooperation in building VAZ, the symbol of material well-being and peaceful industrial reconstruction, facilitated the requests of Soviet officials and Western corporations to lift East-West trade restrictions on non-strategic goods, thus conferring political legitimacy on trade with the Soviet Union
The elusive people's car: Imagined automobility and productive practices along the "Czechoslovak Road to socialism" (1945-1968)
No full textIn Czechoslovakia the automobile was not born socialist. After February 1948 the technicians who were involved in the development of the automobile industry had to take into account, on the one hand, the well-established productive practices that were the result of the complex, multilayered industrial history of zechoslovakia and, on the other hand, the American model of mass production that at the time everyone considered the primary reference for the industry. What is more, almost fifty years of "automobility" had created high expectations among both the experts in the sector and the common people regarding how and when mass motorization would come about. Finally, In this young, industrialized Central European republic, starting from the first half of the twentieth century, the automobile, which was destined for exportation and racing, had become one of the symbolic manufactured products of the Bohemian "industrial tradition”
Inside the black box: in search of conceptual tools for evaluating and designing social innovative practices
No full textEditorial to the special issue titled "Integrating Refugees in Society and Labour Market through Social Innovation: Needs and Challenges". The article reviews how the different contributions included in the special issue define social innovation and shed light on practice
The Czechoslovak automotive industry & the launch of a new model: The Škoda factory in Mladá Boleslav, in the 1970s & 1980s
No full textFrom 1945 to 1989, the Automobilové závody, n.p. (Automotive Plant, a national enterprise), in Mladá Boleslav, manufactured one of the best-known brands of motor car in the Eastern Bloc, the Skoda. This article focuses on the process of planning and manufacturing a change in models in the Czechoslovak automotive industry between 1968 and 1990. It is widely known how the launch of a new model of car represents a key step for every car manufacturer in most parts of the globe. In Czechoslovakia under Communist rule, however, passing from one model to another entailed grotesque, almost insuperable, difficulties, and it can therefore be seen as a textbook example of the complications of the innovation process in a centrally planned economy. The article draws not only on documentation available in company archives but also on the records of the Czechoslovak secret police, the State Security services
Business Travels and Cold War mobilities
Get PDFThe article focuses on business travels and introduces a special issue on Business trips and Cold War mobilities. It underlines the relevance of the topic for both the new field of mobility history and the history of mobility under communist regimes during the Cold War
East-West cooperation in the automotive industry: Enterprises, mobility, production
No full textThe paper introduces the special issue 'East-West cooperation in the automotive industry: Enterprises, mobility, production' which includes four contributions on the development of socialist automotive industry and on the technological relations between Eastern and Western Europe during the Cold War. The 1960s and 1970s intense relations between socialist governments and Western European automobile companies provide further evidence of the permeability of the Iron Curtain, the early entanglements between the two blocs and the lack of internal cohesion inside each of them. The papers stress the role of the enterprise, both socialist and capitalist, as a crucial agent in directing East-West flows of technology and knowledge. They invite to reconsider the classical vision ofWest-East transfer of technology and to go deeper in the study of the political uses of foreign technology and on the processes of reception, adaptation and transformation of Western technologies in Socialist Europe
Production versus Mobility: New Perspectives for an Old Dilemma
No full textThe article is a systematic review of articles published in the first decade of 2000s dealing with the history of the automobile both as industrial product and mobility tool. It foresees the risk of polarization in mobility research: on the one hand, a history of mobility entirely focused on ‘discourse’ and on the meanings and representations of mobility (cultural studies); on the other hand, a history of production and business, more and more technical and ancillary to management studies. Factory life, industrial relations and both process and product technology risk relegation to a restricted niche of experts; this would mean the loss of a terrain highly fertile for research in social, political and economic history. And still the question is if mobility history and the new mobility paradigm can really ignore on the one side the hardware of technology, and the other, the firm as organization which through the production, R&D and marketing functions, shapes the car as a artefact. The article suggests a series of contributions which are relevant to both the new mobility paradigm and the studies on the manufacturing and business history of the automobile. The article illustrates the advantages of a dialogue between studies focusing on the business history of the automotive industry and studies looking at the automobile from the perspective of users and of mobility culture
Digital and sustainable innovation policies in Europe: comparative lessons
Get PDFThe article is the editorial of a special issue of "Innovation. The European Journal for Social Science Research" which deals with digital and sustainable innovations
Erratum to: Effects of nutraceuticals on quality of life and sexual function of perimenopausal women (Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, (2017), 40, 1, (27-32), 10.1007/s40618-016-0500-2)
No full textUnfortunately, one of the co-author first name was wrongly published in the original version. The complete correct name of the co-author is given below. A. M. C. Rapisarda. The original version of this article is also updated
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