Carlos Jesús Fernández Rodríguez

El imaginario managerial: El discurso de la fluidez en la sociedad económica

Este articulo intenta describir el denominado imaginario managerial, esto es, el conjunto de imagenes y representaciones miticas presentes en el discurso empresarial sobre las organizaciones. Estos elementos condensan distintas imagenes de la empresa y el trabajo, atribuyendo un sentido a la tarea misma de gestionar. Desde una perspectiva critica, en este trabajo nos centraremos en los libros de gestion empresarial o literatura del management. En esta literatura no solo se recogen de una manera nitida los ejes que articulan el imaginario social de los directivos de las empresas; ademas, examina su transformacion historica, en una transicion desde un capitalismo solido que enfatiza las jerarquias a otro liquido, basado en la fluidez y las redes.

The Expansion of Temporary Employment in Spain (1984-2010): Neither Socially Fair nor Economically Productive

Since the decade of the 1970s, the growth of non-standard employment (NSE) has become a key issue in Western societies, usually linked to the transition towards a post-industrial economy (Jessop, 1995; Kumar, 1995; Alonso and Martinez Lucio, 2006; Koch, 2006). Many Western countries have undergone major reforms in their labour market legislation, allowing the creation of new forms of employment that would help not only to improve flexibility in human resource management (HRM) but also to find solutions to the persistent problem of unemployment. These new policies have led to a more fragmented landscape in terms of contracts, conditions and arrangements in a process that, in the case of EU countries, has been widely supported by both national and supra-national institutions through various strategies such as flexicurity (Serrano Pascual and Magnusson, 2007). However, the design of non-standard work arrangements and the extent of their use varied notably in different national contexts and were influenced by far from linear trajectories of socio-economic development, which we understand as the results of social struggles in each one of these societies (Crouch, 1993; Ferner and Hyman, 1998; Olsen and Kalleberg, 2004). When considering EU statistics, one immediately notices that part-time jobs are very common in countries such as the Netherlands or, less so, Sweden, while temporary contracts represent approximately 25 per cent of the total labour force in Spain.

Notas sobre la evolución del conocimiento administrativo en la República Argentina y su comparación con el caso español (1913-2007)

This paper presents a comparative historical reconstruction of the evolution of the management discipline in Argentina and Spain – two countries that share common institutional and linguistic characteristics, which derive from their colonial relationship, but differ in terms of their economic development paths. We conclude that there are important parallels in both cases. First, the two countries have a role of “importers” of management knowledge, particularly from the United States, which may result from the positions that they have historically occupied in the capitalist world system. Second, the discipline is dominated by a clearly professionalist orientation, and the production of academic management knowledge seems to have little importance.

Flexicurity and the semantic transformation of the concept of security: the modernisation of the Spanish social protection

During the last decade, flexicurity has appeared as the cornerstone to face the problems of vulnerability and social exclusion. In order to preserve the adaptation to the ‘taken for granted’ need to change and the capacity to re-define competences and skills of employees, the regulatory frames of the labour markets have undertaken a deep political and axiological transformation. This paper – based on an ongoing research project – will explore these new models of governance in the Spanish context focusing on how flexicurity has been translated and developed by the public employment agencies. These developments have enhanced the ‘de-politisation’ of work and strengthened the ‘psychologisation’ of social protection.

Piquenique em um rio congelado: desafios para estudos genuínos em management na Espanha

Ensaio sobre as possibilidades de desenvolvimento de conhecimento genuino em management tendo como contexto a Espanha, dada a vocacao ambivalente do pais na area.

Young Workers and Unions in Spain: A Failed Meeting?

The decline in union membership in most of Western Europe has been widely discussed in the field of industrial relations (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003; Furaker and Berglund, 2003; Waddington and Kerr, 2002; Willman et al., 2007), with a dearth of research devoted to the situation of young workers, often poorly unionised. Some accounts have claimed that the low figures of membership to trade unions by young workers are the result of new individualist attitudes embedded in the transition to a Post-Fordist society (Pakulski and Waters, 1996). Such attitudes would become more common in working life, helping to disengage young employees from the collective values represented by the unions. However, recent research has suggested that the picture is somewhat more complex. Surveys carried out in different countries have shown that young workers maintain a positive view on unions when compared with other age cohorts, and the reasons why their membership figures are lower are the result of other factors, particularly their position in the labour market — linked to unstable jobs in the service sector (Furaker and Berglund, 2003; Tailby and Pollert, 2011; Vandaele, 2012; Waddington and Kerr, 2002). Therefore the poor unionisation of young employees is the result of a twofold process: on the one hand, their fragile position in the labour market, deeply affected by non-standard employment forms (Bradley and Devadason, 2008; Koch and Fritz, 2013), and the growth of precarious jobs (Kretsos, 2010; Standing, 2011); and on the other hand, the failure of trade unions to deploy strategies to engage and organise these workers (Johnson and Jarley, 2005).

De la metáfora del mercado a la sinécdoque del emprendedor: la reconfiguración política del modelo referencial de trabajador

De la metafora del mercado a la sinecdoque del emprendedor: la reconfiguracion politica del modelo referencial de trabajador.

Estudios críticos de la gestión: estudios culturales de los conflictos en el mundo del trabajo

The goal of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to evaluate, after two decades since its inception in the UK, the main outcomes of the Critical Management Studies (CMS) movement in the field of social sciences. CMS represents an alternative to orthodox organizational theory taught in business schools: as compared to the latter, it aims at introducing students to deeper and more critical analyses of organizations, helping them to engage with new theoretical grounds in order to change their views on business. Hence, the legacy of this school of thought will be discussed, as well as an additional reflection on the reorientation of its research agenda in a context of a deep economic crisis and changes in university governance. On the other hand, the text will also reflect on the impact CMS has had on the Spanish academia, discussing the limitations of this project in the Spanish organizational and business framework.

Young Workers in Europe: Perceptions and Discourses on the Labour Market

The situation of young people in Europe and their inclusion in the labour market have become key issues on the European employment agenda. The phenomenon of youth unemployment, vulnerability and precariousness have gained the attention of institutions, politicians and the public opinion since at least the mid-1970s, as young workers became one of the most vulnerable social groups in a context of rising unemployment (despite periods of economic boom). Globalization, information and communications technology and the financialisation of the economy have readjusted the world economy, and these factors have influenced substantially the organization of labour, leading to processes of destandardization and rising dualization in the labour markets (Koch and Fritz 2013). Youth is perceived as a fragile subject in the labour market as the numbers of unemployed in the lower age cohorts have been rising significantly through the last decades disregarding gender or level of education. In the European case, the figures show that unemployment among young people has been quite high during the last decade (Fig. 15.1).

Changes in Japanese Employment Practices: Beyond the Japanese Model, by Arjan Keizer

called ‘democracy in social terms’: the need to base any real democracy on the right to participate in society, including in consumption. This is an important work, one of the most important recent books, not only in labor history, but in social theory. Filled with insights and surprising twists, it repays a careful reading and rereading. It is a model study; I have added it to my graduate reading lists and urge everyone to do the same.