MULTINAZIONALI E LAVORATORI: UN CONFRONTO DI HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TRA ITALIA E BRASILE

Multinational corporations and workers: a human resource management comparison between Italy and Brazil Abstract: In order to compare human resource management (HRM) practices between Italian and Brazilian subsidiaries of three multinational corporations (MNCs) at the shop floor, the relevance of the institutions for the economic actions is highlighted and the varieties of capitalism framework is assumed as a theoretical model. This analytical model is broadened through the inclusion of workers’ (i.e. non managerial employees) protagonism, along with the firm's. Afterwards, the most influential institutions on the shop floor HRM dynamics are selected and assessed. So, human resource management dynamics in subsidiaries are analyzed as a social space where managers and workers interact individually and collectively, according to resources and limits provided them by industrial relations and education system institutions. The national institutional characteristics of trade unions, employer associations and educational systems are traced with reference to sociological literature and through empirical data collected by semi-structured interviews of local managers, trade unions union directors, members of the works council (if it exists) and local representatives of employer associations. These data are the most important empirical source of the research besides the analysis of same (some?) documents (working contracts, national handbook of HRM of the MNCs).After the theoretical and methodological research section, the subsequent section is dedicated to the analysis of the most important characteristics of the selected institutional sub-systems. Path dependency, structural features and organizational agency are the most important analytical dimensions explored in trade unions and employer associations. In Brazil the two institutions present similar features, mainly: still alive corporative origins and high state dependence, low influence in the industrial relation field (due to the “hard law” environment) and limited influence in the HRM dynamics at the shop floor. On the contrary, Italian industrial relations institutions present autonomous and self-organized origins, high power in shaping the labour dynamics through central as well as peripheral and firm bargaining, and they influence many human resource management practices. Moreover, the education system in Brazil is characterized by dualism between good structures voted to social elites versus inadequate structures for the popular classes. As a result, human capital resource is generally linked to this class. The Italian education system on the contrary is fluid, allows social mobility and introduces growing rates of graduated students in the labour markets. The final part of the research analyzes human resource management practices, specifically: recruitment, training and compensation policies. In Brazil dualism is verified as a feature of all practices, whereas dynamics of continuity among the different levels of the work system prevail in Italian subsidiaries. Low influence of industrial relation institutions allows great freedom for local mangers in Brazil, in opposition to the Italian context where trade unions and employer associations maintain a higher level of influence. Institutional divergence of resources possessed by employees at the entrance in the subsidiaries are deepened by HRM internal practices in Brazil, whereas in Italian subsidiaries active trade unions limit this outcome. The most relevant contributions of this research to the academic debate are to link the VoC literature with the HRM one and to propose a innovative comparative analysis between two distant institutional environments.