The GERPISA, international network of Social Sciences on the automobile, has developed between 2007 and 2011 its fifth research programme entitled "Sustainable Development and the Automobile Industry". Its aim was to understand to what extent and how companies and States had taken into accounts the exigencies of sustainable development. More precisely, the question was to measure the scale and the pace of the changes that the rising importance of these political and social requirements has placed on the industry. These changes are related to different interlinked dimensions: as it is often stressed by the literature on the sustainable development public and corporate actors have indeed to develop synergies (but also to make trade-offs) between environmental performance, economic performance and the social progress. It is the raison why since 2007, the GERPISA has developed the reflexion on the quest for better fleet performances in terms of emissions within a more general reflexion on the other constraints that affect simultaneously the elaboration of corporate strategies and of public policy regulations. The 2008-2009 crisis has reminded brutally the importance of these other constraints. Environmental sustainability is certainly important, but the economic sustainability of the products sold by the carmakers and of the processes involved in their production still is a very problematic dimension of the automobile production worldwide. This economic sustainability, as the GERPISA has always stressed, is linked both to the microeconomic capability of firms to make profits and to develop coherent strategies with their own macro-economic environment, on the one hand, and to the employment conditions of workers, on the other. This collective work edited by Giuseppe Calabrese is the first book published from this 5th international programme. It is mainly focused on the issues related to the technological innovations aiming at achieving better environmental performances of the automobile products. It approaches these questions from a large variety of points of view. Such an approach reflects not only the value added generated by the mobilisation of an international network to explore such a complex set of questions, but also the interest to the scientific community working on sustainable development of interacting with a network of researchers that has developed a detailed knowledge of the automobile industry and of its history. By combining this expertise of the industry with the analysis of the dynamics implied by the integration of the environmental exigencies, the book provides an insightful measure of the changes that are taking place. It shows in particular, that beyond their technological relevance, these changes have already acquired a new economical and geopolitical dimension: what is at stake today, beyond the reduction of emissions, is the capacity of this industry to make its "second revolution", to find, in the context of the extraordinary growth of productions and demands in the emerging countries, the ways of a renewed sustainability. If these ways are still in 2011 far from clear, the contributions gathered in this book allow grasping those that are emerging and the automobile worlds that they might lead to.
Innovative design and sustainable development in the automotive industry
Calabrese;
2016
Abstract
The GERPISA, international network of Social Sciences on the automobile, has developed between 2007 and 2011 its fifth research programme entitled "Sustainable Development and the Automobile Industry". Its aim was to understand to what extent and how companies and States had taken into accounts the exigencies of sustainable development. More precisely, the question was to measure the scale and the pace of the changes that the rising importance of these political and social requirements has placed on the industry. These changes are related to different interlinked dimensions: as it is often stressed by the literature on the sustainable development public and corporate actors have indeed to develop synergies (but also to make trade-offs) between environmental performance, economic performance and the social progress. It is the raison why since 2007, the GERPISA has developed the reflexion on the quest for better fleet performances in terms of emissions within a more general reflexion on the other constraints that affect simultaneously the elaboration of corporate strategies and of public policy regulations. The 2008-2009 crisis has reminded brutally the importance of these other constraints. Environmental sustainability is certainly important, but the economic sustainability of the products sold by the carmakers and of the processes involved in their production still is a very problematic dimension of the automobile production worldwide. This economic sustainability, as the GERPISA has always stressed, is linked both to the microeconomic capability of firms to make profits and to develop coherent strategies with their own macro-economic environment, on the one hand, and to the employment conditions of workers, on the other. This collective work edited by Giuseppe Calabrese is the first book published from this 5th international programme. It is mainly focused on the issues related to the technological innovations aiming at achieving better environmental performances of the automobile products. It approaches these questions from a large variety of points of view. Such an approach reflects not only the value added generated by the mobilisation of an international network to explore such a complex set of questions, but also the interest to the scientific community working on sustainable development of interacting with a network of researchers that has developed a detailed knowledge of the automobile industry and of its history. By combining this expertise of the industry with the analysis of the dynamics implied by the integration of the environmental exigencies, the book provides an insightful measure of the changes that are taking place. It shows in particular, that beyond their technological relevance, these changes have already acquired a new economical and geopolitical dimension: what is at stake today, beyond the reduction of emissions, is the capacity of this industry to make its "second revolution", to find, in the context of the extraordinary growth of productions and demands in the emerging countries, the ways of a renewed sustainability. If these ways are still in 2011 far from clear, the contributions gathered in this book allow grasping those that are emerging and the automobile worlds that they might lead to.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
