My project analyses the incorporation of the Romanian car industry in global commodity chains between the late 1960s and 2017, with a focus on expertise formation and knowledge transfers in the field of economic know-how, industrial management, and labour regulations. Using a mixed methodological approach (archival research, expert interviews, and discourse analysis), my project bears witness to the forms of power associated with global transformations in the world of production and to their impact on the Romanian transition to neoliberalism. I examine how the integration of Romanian car industry into transnational production networks since the 1970s was effected through changes in labour regulations, as well as managerial ideologies and practices, as responses to technological advancement and market pressures at a global scale.

A full-length study is available here.

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O conversație cu Alina Cucu, bursieră NEC Odobleja în anul academic 2018-2019. Temă de cercetare: “Flexible Capitalism from an Eastern European Corner: Transformations in the Romanian Automotive Industry, 1965–2017”