This paper of History of Accounting aims at investigating the business economics experience of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno between 1950 and 1965, with particular reference to the role played by Cassa in the framework of extraordinary intervention policy in Southern Italy. So, the paper is focused on those institutional and organizational features that rendered Cassa a completely innovative body in the Italian economic and administrative scenario at the time. This paper adopts a research methodology based on the procedure of diachronic comparison, that is typical of the historical studies in business economics field, and it gives an interpretation of observed phenomena in the light of classical doctrine of the Zappian Italian school of business economics. It has therefore been essential to find historiographic, legislative, economic-financial documents (starting with the Cassa’s balance sheets relating to the period 1950-1965), as well as statistical-demographic documents, at ISTAT Historical Archives, Archives of Territorial Economic Development, SVIMEZ and Central State Archives, in order to lay the groundwork to conduct this study according to the canons of Zappa’s classical school. This work assumes as its temporal reference a period considered as significant, both for its extension and because it makes possible to cover the entire temporal interval between the year of establishment of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (1950) and the final year of the fifteen-year plan (1965), thus facilitating a dynamic investigation from pre-industrialization phase (1950-1957) to industrialization phase (1958-1965). Moreover, many authors consider 1965 as the peak year of the ‘golden age’ of extraordinary intervention. This work allows us to re-construct the relationship of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno with respect to the plan policy (therefore, with respect to the Plan as a formal strategic act), analyzing how it essentially was an implementation type relation, based on a rigorously technical-administrative function of Cassa. Moreover, the research shows how Cassa per il Mezzogiorno was, effectively, a unique experience in the economic and administrative scenario at the time, because it embodied a completely different institutional-organizational model than in any other public body known up to that moment. In many ways, it anticipated the spirit of the Authorities. In fact, Cassa per il Mezzogiorno was a ‘public supply organisation’, designed as an integral part of the ‘composite organisation’ of the Italian State (therefore, it was gifted with typical authority of an ‘extraordinary’ administrative body of the State); at the same time, Cassa was given that special managerial and operational autonomy considered typical of an enterprise. This paper concludes by arguing how the historical sources collected about systemic problems and structural weaknesses of traditional Italian Administration of the ‘50s, allow to correlate the good results achieved by the Extraordinary Plan until 1965 with the peculiar institutional-organisational conformation of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. Thus, this research work allows the History of Accounting studies a step forward the evaluation of the role played by Cassa per il Mezzogiorno in the Southern Italy economy up to 1965, offering a new interpretive-key about its economic function and its business model, as well as providing a possible historical, organisational and cultural reference to read the new challenges of extraordinary public intervention in the economy that today affect the whole of Italy in the PNRR post COVID-19 scenario.
Keywords: Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, history of accounting, public management.
Vinci S. (2022), L’esperienza economico-aziendale della “Cassa per il Mezzogiorno” tra 1950 e 1965, nel quadro dell’intervento straordinario, RIREA, 1, pp. 64-86. DOI: 10.17408/RIREASV010203042022
