Teorie dell'adattamento e crisi d'impresa: evidenze dal caso Fiat

The paper explores the determinants of a firm’s crisis through an «organizational adaptation» perspective. In this regard, a research framework recently developed by Mellahi and Wilkinson (2004) is at first shown. The framework is then tested in the European automobile industry through the analysis of the huge Fiat group’s economic and financial crisis in the nineties. In this regard, empirical findings are drawn from public archival sources. The discussion of the main results and the implications for further research follow the analysis of the collected data. Among the different methodological and theoretical perspectives on the determinants of firms’ crisis developed by literature, the paper can help to enforce the scientific conciliation wished by scholars (Van Witteeloostuijn, 1998).