International Human Resource Management e gestione della mobilità internazionale

international mobility; IHRM; young people; globalization; labour marke

Manuale di sopravvivenza per giovani in cerca di lavoro. Le parole chiave dalla A alla Z.

labour market; young generation; generation mix; employability; net generatio

Giovani e Lavoro: dall'Università a mondo. I giovani nelle aziende senza confini

labour market; international mobility; working abroad; expatriates; HRM policie

The Role of Human Resource Manager

The paper explores to what extent HR Departments in Italy are characterized – in the perspective of HRM (Boselie, et al. 2009) - by a shift from “administrative” roles to ones more focused on valuing human capital and supporting organizational change, as “business partner” and “change agent”. After framing the theoretical background analysing the different roles of HRM highlighted in the literature, referring to Ulrich (1997) a survey was conducted on 102 large companies operating in Italy. The data analysis highlights critical dynamics in the process of adopting the roles of business partner and change agent: – the ongoing economic crisis seems to have contributed to a slowdown of the adoption of roles more focused on investing on people and organizational development and to a step backwards administrative roles and a short term perspective; – in a mere quantitative perspective, the change agent role is less adopted than the business partner; nonetheless, change agent, when adopted, appears to be sounder and based on rather consistent programmes and actions, while business partner seems to correspond more to a formal label, coherent with managerial fashions, than to real role behaviours. The main limitation is due to the impact of the economic crisis during data collection and to the necessity to test the hypotheses on more representative samples. The paper identifies possible areas of intervention for HR manager in order to become change agent and business partner. Its value is mainly due to being one of the few quantitative research on the roles of HR in the Italian context

Human Resource Management: evoluzione o involuzione?

Most recent international researches point out that companies are increasingly changing their Human Resource Management (HRM) models from a “Personnel Management” perspective, where people are considered as a cost to be minimized, to a “Human Resource Management” perspective, where people represent the main source of competitive advantage in order to face the business challenges. Concerning this second perspective, literature makes a distinction between two different specific approaches: “valuing people”, based on developing human capital as key factor for succeeding in business, and “strategic HRM”, highlighting the need to coherently link HRM practices and company’s strategic objectives. Based on a survey conducted on 102 companies in year 2009, this paper aims at investigating to what extent HR Departments of companies operating in Italy have shifted towards the two “Human Resource Management” approaches (“valuing people” and “strategic HRM”). The paper consists of four sections: in the first one, the theoretical assumptions of the research are discussed, referring both to the overall distinction between “Personnel Management” and “Human Resource Management” and, in this latter perspective, to the specific characteristics of the “valuing people” and “strategic HRM” approaches. The second section presents the specific research objectives and the methodology adopted, while in the third one the results of the research are illustrated. Finally, the results and their main implications are discussed, highlighting some critical issues affecting the Italian context in the shift towards a Human Resource Management perspective