Dalla fine del fascismo allo statuto del 1948

The essay – part of a collective four-volumes work, based on primary sources – deals with the Institute for Industrial Recovery (IRI) during the short, complex period, amidst 2WW mobilization and postwar crisis. In these years the large group owned by the State, but managed with efficiency criteria, confirmed itself as a key tool for the economic development of the Nation. Rearmament asked IRI a intense work, under abnormal and very critical conditions. At the end of the fascist regime (in 1943 Italy was divided into two zones, the Centre-South under the Italian government and the Allied forces and the North of the “Republic of Salò”, occupied by the Nazis and fascism), IRI experienced requisitions and destructions of its industries, the suspension of the governing bodies, the transfer of managers and employees, the lack of any group coordination. Moreover, the uncertainty over the future of the institute began at the liberation of Rome and lasted beyond the war. So its management had to avoid the IRI dissolution and defend itself against the imputation of fascism. The essay analyzes the effects of war on the financial budgets and the efforts of public managers to safeguard IRI productive capacity and managerial skills from dispersion. After the war, the great difficulties lasted. On the one hand, IRI was committed to finance the recovery of the affiliated companies; on the other side it had to face many external hostilities and internal disputes, that often opposed the new political leadership and corporate management. As IRI was cooperating to the reconstruction of Italian economy after the war, the political and economic debate about its future is analyzed. The new statute approved in 1948 relaunched its role aiming to the industrial development of Italy, in the new frame of the democratic political system.