On two modernities of the polish automotive industry: The case of fabryka samochodów osobowych and its staff (1948-2011)

Focusing on the history of the Polish main car factory, the FSO, the paper examines two modernisation waves in the country’s automotive industry: the socialist Government’s purchase of a license from the Italian Fiat in the 1960s and the acquisition of the factory by the Daewoo Corporation in the 1990s. The history of the FSO as an enterprise shows, above all, the pitfalls of dependent development. It has, however, resulted in the training of a class of specialists and engineers for whom the implementation of foreign technologies and management cultures presented opportunities for self-advancement, redefinitions of their identity, along with reconsiderations of the value and meaning of work.