Table Of ContentEdited by
Daniela Felisini
R E A S S E S S I N G T H E
R O L E O F M A N A G E M E N T
I N T H E G O L D E N A G E
An International Comparison
of Public Sector Managers
1945–1975
Central Issues in
Contemporary Economic Theory
and Policy
General Editor: Gustavo Piga
Central Issues in Contemporary Economic Theory
and Policy
Series Editor
Gustavo Piga
Economia e Istituzioni
Tor Vergata University
Rome, Italy
Daniela Felisini
Editor
Reassessing the Role
of Management in the
Golden Age
An International Comparison of Public Sector
Managers 1945–1975
Editor
Daniela Felisini
Department of History, Humanities and Society
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
Rome, Italy
Central Issues in Contemporary Economic Theory and Policy
ISBN 978-3-319-48721-2 ISBN 978-3-319-48722-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48722-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017931972
© Servizio Italiano Pubblicazioni Internazionali 2017
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the
whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or informa-
tion storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does
not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective
laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are
believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors
give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions
that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
Introduction 1
Daniela Felisini
State and Enterprise: The Case of SOEs in Europe in the Twentieth
Century 9
Franco Amatori
The Boards of UK Nationalised Industries and Their Members
c.1950–c.1979 17
Neil Rollings
The Managerial Revolution in Italy. The Managers of IRI
(1945–1970) 39
Daniela Felisini
Two Lives Both Parallel and Divergent: Pasquale Saraceno and
Giorgio Fuà 57
Franco Amatori
French Public Sector Managers 1945–1975: Modernization
Without Miracle 65
Patrick Fridenson
v
vi Contents
SASOL. From State-Owned Enterprise to Chemical Leader:
Management and Strategy, 1952–1980 87
Grietjie Verhoef
The Role of Military Managers in State- Owned Companies in
Argentina. Astilleros y Fábricas Navales del Estado (1953–1986) 113
Cintia Russo
Industrial Policy and the Role of MITI in Japan 141
Shinji Fukukawa, Franco Amatori, and Corrado Molteni
The Public Sector and the Regime of Capital in India, 1947–1975 153
Chirashree Das Gupta
Formation of Industrial Complexes in South Korea in the 1960s
and 1970s: Reconsidering Entrepreneurial State in Asia 179
Eugene K. Choi
Index 199
List of Figures and Graph
Fig. 1 Public and private sector shares in GDP (2004–2005 prices) 160
Fig. 2 Percentage share of gross capital formation in gross domestic
product 161
Graph 1 Typologies of IRI managers 1933–1970 47
vii
List of Tables
Table 1 National coal board member salaries 1950–1981 (£) 25
Table 2 Breakdown of some nationalised industry boards, 1950 and 1984 31
Table 3 Average age of members of the boards of national industries,
1950 and 1984 31
Table 4 Backgrounds of nationalised industry board members,
1950 and 1984 32
Table 1 IRI production share in % of Italian Industries – 1933 42
Table 2 IRI financial resources 1949–1973 (in % of the total) 50
Table 1 Patents granted to French Soes Energy and Transport
Companies from their creation until 1958 72
Table 1 Argentina, SOEs/GDP (1950–1975) (%) 133
Table 2 AFNE, employment 133
Table 3 Major naval productions, AFNE 1953–2012 133
Table 4 AFNE, productive diversification (%/total turnover) 134
Table 1 Gross capital formation (GCF) as percentage of gross
domestic product (GDP) 157
Table 2 Gross capital formation and change in stock of capital 161
Table 3 Regionwise assistance sanctioned and disbursed by IDBI
(in Rs millions) 170
Table 4 Sectorwise direct project assistance by IDBI
(June 1964–June 1975) 171
ix
Introduction
Daniela Felisini
Abstract This book provides a critical reassessment of the role of the public
sector during the Golden Age in both advanced and emerging economies.
Authoritative scholars from all over the world focus on a major player in the
shaping of mixed economies: the top managers of State-owned enterprises.
They analyze values, economic cultures and strategies of these managers,
opening up a comparative perspective of the topic. The following chapters
suggest a reconsideration of the role played by the State in the economic
development and in the modernization of the production apparatus of many
countries in Western Europe and Asia, Latin America and Africa.
For almost three decades, the so-called Washington consensus—the “mystique
of the market”, based on unreserved faith in its self-regulating capabilities—
has shaped national and global economic cultures, inspiring corporate strate-
gies and enhancing the social standing of managers. Nevertheless, the severe
financial crisis that started in 2008 has shaken this faith as it invoked and
D. Felisini (*)
Department of History, Humanities and Society, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”,
Rome, Italy
© The Author(s) 2017 1
D. Felisini (ed.), Reassessing the Role of Management in the Golden Age,
Central Issues in Contemporary Economic Theory and Policy,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48722-9_1
2 D. Felisini
relegitimized State intervention, especially in the United States and Europe.
The massive bailouts of banks and industrial firms involved a new presence
of the State in enterprises, thus raising new reflections on their management.
Meanwhile, the world economic power continues to shift to the emerg-
ing markets, where the State and State-owned companies remain major eco-
nomic players. They accounted for one-third of the emerging world’s foreign
direct investment between 2003 and 2010, and in 2014 out of the ten biggest
global listed companies by revenues, four were State-owned ones (three being
Chinese). Additionally, there is the exploit of sovereign wealth funds, while
technical agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the European
Central Bank are playing an increasingly relevant role.
This situation provides an important opportunity for business historians
since it calls for a critical reassessment of the role of the public sector during
the Golden Age in advanced as well as emerging economies, focusing on a
major player in the setting of mixed economies: the top managers of State-
owned enterprises (SOEs). Without denying the fact that those companies
encountered important, even radical failures, we still have to consider how
crucial SOEs were for economic recovery and for the modernization of the
productive apparatus of many countries, from Western Europe to India, from
Latin America to South Africa.
Inspired by these considerations, together with Franco Amatori, the first
designer of the project, and Nuria Puig Raposo, whom I thank deeply for the
initial work done together, we decided to organize a session at the 17th World
Economic History Congress in Kyoto (August 2015). The main goal of the
session was to identify a significant number of managers of State-owned com-
panies, in industrial, financial and other services sectors, at both the individ-
ual and collective levels and to examine their professional development and
performance during the Golden Age. More specifically, we were interested
in knowing their profile: family origins, education, networks, recruitment in
SOEs, professional career, the international dimension of their actions, even-
tually their “in and out” with the public sector and their possible conflicts of
interest. Via a comparative perspective, we wished to examine their actions in
all their complexity and estimate their overall impact on the socio-economic
system. We also aimed at analysing the contribution of managers and mana-
gerial institutions to the rise and fall of the mixed economy and its cultural
paradigms.
In this volume it is possible to find gathered the proposals of scholars from
all over the world. They presented the experiences of various countries, with
different institutional settings, thus opening a real comparative perspective.
The papers have been carefully discussed by Matthias Kipping and Luciano
