HRM in Brazil: an institutional approach.
| Autor | de Amorim, Wilson Aparecido Costa |
| Cargo | Human resource management in Brazil |
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Introduction
Organizational management's path in Brazil has been the subject of several studies. These papers have proposed typologies for international comparisons (Hofstede, Hilal, Malvezzi, Tanure & Vinkens, 2010; Chu & Wood, 2008) or highlighted local traits inherent to Brazilian management (Tanure, 2010). Similar analyses can be identified in the human resources management (HRM) field, articulating transformation in economy, labor market, labor relations and within organizations themselves. In that direction, there are works on many themes from historical periodization (Leite & Albuquerque, 2010; Fleury & Fischer, 1992; Fischer, 2015; Amorim et al., 2019; Barboza, Oltramari, Muller & Salvagni, 2019), distinct organizational areas evolution, including HRM areas, as well as their roles (Fischer, 2015; Lacombe & Chu, 2008; Barbosa, 2005; Carvalho Neto, 2012) or their linking to internationalization processes (Wood, Tonelli & Cooke, 2011; Carvalho Neto, Amorim & Fischer, 2016; Amorim & Fischer, 2015).
Nonetheless, said analyses seldom favor the structural heterogeneity - in economic and social terms - that impacts organizations in the vast Brazilian territory. Therefore, a better understanding on how HRM areas operate in Brazil and how they are articulated along with labor market and relations remains as a task uncompleted.
This article performs a comparative study, at national level in Brazil, on the operation of HRM areas, analyzing how companies regarded labor market and labor relations aspects into their strategies, and when configuring people management models in place in the country, in the 2014-2019 period, based on local conditions. The article brings combined findings from two research projects consecutively carried out throughout six years and covering all Brazilian regions. In the first stage (2014-2016), the following metropolitan areas were investigated in sequence: Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. In the second stage (2017-2019), Manaus, Cuiaba, Belem and Recife were researched. The research is based on qualitative analysis, encompassing document survey, systematic literature review, specialists' panel discussions, eight focus groups with 43 human resources (HR) managers and interviews with 16 union members.
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Labor market, labor relations and organizational HRM
The industrial relations system (IRS) approach proposed by Dunlop (1972) considers that the coexistence of workers/unions, government and companies under the same economic, social and technological framework is made possible through ideas and beliefs that those entities create and share. One of the outcomes from the labor relations system functioning is the network of rules that regulates employment relations and the interaction among the players. Kaufman (2010), by creating the employment relations system (ERS) concept, proposes a harmonization between IRS's and HRM's frameworks, giving employment relations an essential role in the analysis of what happens in organizations in regards to labor hiring. According to the ERS concept, the firm comprehends its context - input, product and labor markets and other institutions - and configures structures, policies and practices to attract, develop, motivate, terminate, coordinate employees focusing on organization results (Kaufman, 2012).
Resorting to the institutional approach opens the possibility of comparative studies among countries, for example. With no disregard to the HRM universalistic models argument's strength, and the pressure they bear toward the convergence of policies and practices among organizations, it is interesting to investigate whether or not different national or local scenarios engender HRM modes divergence. Some scholars, for instance, explore the HRM convergence and/or divergence phenomenon in the European Union (Mayrhofer, Sparrow & Brewster, 2012; Mayrhofer et al. (2011). Their results point to both convergence and divergence presence, depending on the observed aspect in HRM within its context. In the convergence hypothesis lie the possibilities of different shapes of isomorphism - coercive, mimetic and normative - as suggested by DiMaggio and Powell (2007). Organizations' HRM models' convergence or divergence also navigates through the way HRM relates to the context materialized by labor markets and labor relations.
At this point, it is relevant to highlight the interaction that organizations form with the labor market through their HRM areas. Neste ponto e interessante destacar a interagao que as organizagoes, por meio de sua HRM, estabelecem com o mercado de trabalho. At first, it is assumed that the organization takes the labor market as the supplier of a resource: manpower. However, in larger organizations and/or in those with more sophisticated management, this relationship is more complex and dynamic. It is an HRM decision whether to hire employees from outside or to organize and develop an internal labor market through policies and practices that focus on career mobility, employee development and compensation mechanisms (Kaufman, 2010). Organizations with a more developed HRM department tend to interact less with the external labor market. When employees are draw in primarily from the external labor market, the HR area has lower institutional weight and, therefore, it is more sensitive to external elements.
Kaufman (2010) examines the relationship of the organizations and their HRM areas with both internal and external labor markets and aiming at classifying them, identifies three types of organization: (1) "Best Place to Work," with a sophisticated HRM area, with the objective of keeping the external labor market's influence over the internal labor market to the minimum; (2) a decent place to work, with a partially developed HRM area in regards to its policies and practices and therefore also partially exposed to the external labor market's behavior and (3) the lowest tier, with low hiring standards and underdeveloped HRM area, offering not very attractive jobs and, therefore, more susceptible to labor market changes.
In regards to Kaufman's (2010) typology, it is possible to establish a connection to labor relations theme, based on collective bargaining and a proxy for union influence in its analysis. Conceptually, it is possible to accept that there is a weaker union influence over the "Best Place to Work" tier companies. Within this group, the more favorable conditions for hiring, fostered by HRM (e.g. higher wages, better fringe benefits), leave little room for the exercise of union influence through strikes or other forms of mobilization. Across the companies with low hiring quality, union influence also tends to be small as those organizations prioritize lower qualification labor. Because these workers constitute a relatively abundant resource in the labor market, they do not manage to build stable employment bonds and this hinders union actions on their interests. The mid-tier group - "decent places to work" - therefore seems to be the one most potentially subject to union interference, once their employees do not enjoy the highest salaries, but they are not at the bottom of the labor market either.
Under these conditions, it is reasonable to assume that organizations' HRM areas adjust their strategies seeking lower exposure to the external labor market influence or merely taking advantage of said market to make business viable. Evidently, those dynamics are founded on the basis of the very characteristics of the ERS in which the organizations are inserted. In this system, HRM policies and practices are important but so are the labor market and labor relations' general characteristics.
Bringing this discussion to Brazil requires the identification of some national labor market's fundamental characteristics. First of all, in structural terms, the prominent trait is its heterogeneity in regards to the job profiles (Pochmann & Silva, 2020). In this sense, the high degree of informality is relevant, as well as the inequality across regions, across economic sectors and even within metropolitan areas (center vs outskirts). Looking at this aspect, south and southeast regions comprise more structured labor markets when compared to north, northeast and Midwest regions (IBGE, 2020).
A more structured labor market involves, for instance, lower informality level, lower unemployment rate, more qualified labor supply and higher financial compensation level. With no significant change to these structural characteristics, some interesting changes were observed in the Brazilian labor market between 2003 and 2014. One of those changes was a slight reduction of the heterogeneity across regions. Another one was the rise, in all regions, of the work force education level in the labor market. However, after over 10 years in a buoyant economy, as of 2014, there was a decline in the labor market situation, with a striking turnaround of hitherto positive indicators (Barbosa, 2019).
In regards to labor relations, it is noticeable that in Brazil, unions' efforts tend to be more organized in states in which industry is more relevant and the labor market is more structured, as it is the case in south and southeast regions. This higher level of union organization, though, does not necessarily imply in more conflicting labor relations but more stable and consolidated in more mature and traditional negotiation processes. Said processes are built on the basis of experienced negotiators and professionalized negotiations from both organizations' and unions' ends.
In the matter of unions' scope, it is key to mention the Labour Reform (November 2019). After discrete changes to CLT (Consolidagao das Leis do Trabalho [Brazilian Consolidated Labour Law]) made since the 1990s (Campos, 2015), this labor reform altered more than 100 items in the document (Krein, Gimenez & Santos, 2018). The reform made wide changes and was driven by the need of greater...
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