Le grandi imprese nello sviluppo industriale italiano

The book represents a historical analysis of the change that affected the largest Italian companies from the beginnings (the great icons of the second half of the nineteenth century such as Ansaldo, Edison, Fiat) to the most recent years. An evolution that involved firstly a virtuous path up to the years of the economic miracle, and then a reversal of the trend fueled by the propensity to financial operations preferred to real development through technological innovations. The decline was due to many mistakes made by the governments that succeeded each other after 1948 (erroneous industrial policies) and by the big private capitalists who proved inadequate especially in the years of globalization. Mainly since the nineties of the last century, the resources of labour and capital left unused by large companies favored the expansion of a new kind of capitalism, the fourth in order of time. It follows the first characterized by large enterprises born such by initiative of local élites with the support of large banques d’affaires (mixed banks), the second one originated from the crisis of those same mixed banks and their rescue that brought the largest industrial enterprises under State control and the third represented by small enterprises inside the industrial districts grown in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. The Italian manufacturing structure in the fourth capitalism sees winning medium-sized companies, family-controlled and with a flexible management conducted by managers whose skills are equivalent to those typical of large companies. The fundamental characteristics of these companies are the productive specialization, the propensity to create market niches on which to position themselves as leader, fundamental links in the national and international supply chains, a strong financial stability thanks to the use of own resources fed by operating cash-flows, the localization in territories with a high propensity for entrepreneurship and a high density of skilled workers; all useful to exploit economies of scale external to the enterprises, but internal to the integrated systems they promote. The typical sign of this capitalism is its success on the international markets, which in the long term implies a strong net surplus of the balance between exports and imports of industrial goods made in Italy.