Abstract:

The Wine-Growers’ Cooperative in question represents a significant example of how an organisation, which has acted promptly and with foresight in picking up "weak signals" from the market and the environment, can become an incentive for other businesses (private firms or cooperative) and also an important frame of reference even for local Institutions’ projects relating to the subject of "Quality". In order to describe this case, this paper is divided into three parts. The first part describes the history of the Wine-Growers Cooperative, its past decisions, its present size and the results achieved to date in terms of both production and market (the period considered runs approximately from its foundation after the war to the early Nineties). The second part describes the guidelines of the General Development Plan started up from 1992 in order to boost the Cooperative’s activities with a view to meeting the challenges imposed by the changes in the market and the competition system. Mention is made of its strategies, short and long term aims, the constraints encountered and the resources needed. The third part describes the implementation of the Plan in greater detail, the operational programmes commenced, the individual actions aimed at the various targets (both "internal" and "external"), some results achieved in changing corporate philosophy, especially in terms of innovation (technological, organisational and managerial) and some problems which remain to be solved.