“Institutional Permeability” and Employment Relations in Europe: a Comparative Perspective on HR Policies in MNCs in France and the CEECs Cover Image

“Institutional Permeability” and Employment Relations in Europe: a Comparative Perspective on HR Policies in MNCs in France and the CEECs
“Institutional Permeability” and Employment Relations in Europe: a Comparative Perspective on HR Policies in MNCs in France and the CEECs

Author(s): Patrick Dieuaide
Subject(s): Economy
Published by: Editura Universitatii din Oradea
Keywords: multinationals firms; labor-management relations; HR policies; institutions; comparative analysis France-CEECs

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is based on a field survey conducted by the author and others on behalf of France’s Ministry of Employment within 8 French Multinational Companies (MNCs) present in the CEECs (Hungary, Romania and Slovakia). We analyse one singular aspect of this work, revealed by corporate strategies of MNC and consisting in the ability of head management to ajust industrial relations to strategic and operational objectives. The notion of “institutional permeability” of employment relation is put forward and discussed for understanging this phenomenon. At a general point of view, this notion is defined as a gap between the rules and the representations, practices and strategies of actors they are meant to regulate. In this contribution, this notion is apprehended at two levels: first, at an “institutional gaps” level, revealed localy by the practices and the devices of management set up by the directions of firm. It follows an erosion of the power of regulation by existing legal and normative frameworks; second, at an “institutional rules” level, set up and adjusted by States themselves with the aim to build of a new institutional frame able to garantee a certain spatial and temporal cohesion between international strategies of firms, territories of setting-up and employment relation within the European Union. This dynamic is essentially based on a re-intermediation of the employment relationship via a repositioning of the State in the sphere of relationships by MNCs in territories they invest in.

  • Issue Year: 2012
  • Issue No: 13
  • Page Range: 119-129
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: English