The Management of Human Resources in Emilia Romagna in the Context of the European Market

In recent years, though somewhat later than other disciplines studying the ‘labour’ factor, the analysis of industrial relations and labour law has taken a greater interest in the normative and industrial framework of changes in labour organisation and behaviour in companies. The considerable legal problems arising from the profound transformations of productive processes and entrepreneurial strategies, in particular the compatibility of some of the more innovative techniques of human resources management with a normative framework clearly based on a Ford-Taylor model of labour organisation, have underlined the fact that labour law is not simply a technical discipline for defending a social category characterised by a lack of safeguards and economic dependence. Undoubtedly, in terms of its definition as a discipline and its historical development, labour law has both a social and an economic focus. However, recent studies into the forms and limits to flexibility in human resources management, and above all the interpretative model of the flexible enterprise, show that industrial relations and labour law is, or may be, something quite different: a legal specialisation relating to production and hence a tool for business administration, regulating the interface between capital and labour.