IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/entsoc/v11y2010i03p594-635_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State Ownership and International Competitiveness: The Italian Finmeccanica from Alfa Romeo to Aerospace and Defense (1947–2007)

Author

Listed:
  • Felice, Emanuele

Abstract

The article reconstructs the history of the Italian state-owned holding Finmeccanica, which since its birth in 1948 lived through a number of corporate reorganizations (shipyards, automobiles with Alfa Romeo, energy) and is now one of the leading European companies in aerospace and defence. With reference to the history of the Italian state entrepreneurship, this case may be paradigmatic of the advent of a new era, characterized by partially privatized enterprises in sectors considered strategic which are successful in the international arena (Finmeccanica, ENI). The article shows that the aeronautics, space and electronics divisions began in the 1950s and as a result of their technological characteristics were kept relatively free from political interference, with a strong propensity to pursue internationalization and thus competitiveness. The conclusion is that, under certain conditions, state ownership may result effective in ensuring not only adequate financial resources, but also a proper managerial governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Felice, Emanuele, 2010. "State Ownership and International Competitiveness: The Italian Finmeccanica from Alfa Romeo to Aerospace and Defense (1947–2007)," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 594-635, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:11:y:2010:i:03:p:594-635_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1467222700009307/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emanuele Felice & Amedeo Lepore, 2017. "State intervention and economic growth in Southern Italy: the rise and fall of the ‘Cassa per il Mezzogiorno’ (1950–1986)," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(3), pages 319-341, April.
    2. Emanuele Felice & Michelangelo Vasta, 2015. "Passive modernization? The new human development index and its components in Italy's regions (1871–2007)," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 19(1), pages 44-66.
    3. Emanuele Felice & Giovanni Vecchi, 2012. "Italy’s Modern Economic Growth, 1861-2011," Department of Economics University of Siena 663, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    4. repec:fan:istois:v:html10.3280/isto2021-043005 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Erasmo Papagni & Amedeo Lepore & Emanuele Felice & Anna Laura Baraldi & Maria Rosaria Alfano, 2018. "Public Investment and Growth Accelerations: The Case of Southern Italy, 1951-1995," EERI Research Paper Series EERI RP 2018/10, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:11:y:2010:i:03:p:594-635_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eso .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.