António Moniz

The interest to study this factory of GM group in Portugal is due to the facto of being one of the oldest assembly lines of the automotive sector still operating in Portugal (it was founded in 1963). Besides that, it went recently across a very intensive technological change, and then would be interesting to know the organisation of work model chose. The Opel factory occupies at the moment the former one that belonged to Ford Lusitana. There it has being under production some modules that feed the assembly line on JIT and in sequence. Although there were severe difficulties to implement the case study at Opel, this report could be done using secondary information and several interviews at the factory and initial visits. This Opel factory was recently closed down in the frame of a GM European strategy for re-structuring.

In this working paper are present the main provisional results of the first round of a Delphi survey held in Portugal on the automotive sector. It was done under the WorTiS project, developed by IET – Research Centre on Enterprise and Work Innovation, and financed by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology. The majority of experts consider to have an average of less knowledge in almost all the scenario topics presented. Nevertheless, we considered specially the topics where the experts considered themselves to have some knowledge. There were no “irrelevant” topics considered as such by the expert panel. There are also no topics that is not considered a need for co-operation (that happens in jus tone case). The lack of technological infra-structrures was not considered as an hindered factor for the accomplishement of any scenario. The experts panel considered no other international competence besides US, Japan or Germany in these topics. Although the members of the expert panel were not as many as needed, These situations will be taken into consideration for a second round of the Delphi survey

This paper is a draft contribution for a definition of the concept of divestment. This topic is still very influenced by definitions from the fields of economics or management. Thus, from a group of definitions and approaches developed by different authors we try to elaborate on this divestment concept, searching for indicators and variables related to this practice. The founded indicators allow us to identify the main consequences and the potential social impacts due to divestment situations. Also we try to develop a methodology of research for analysis and impact framework that come from divestment action of companies.

A lot has been written over the last decade with regard to Toyota and the productive model associated to it (toyota-ism). And more specifically concerning the "(…) best-seller that changed the... sociological world" (Castillo, 1998: 31). But the case of Salvador Caetano’s Ovar Industrial Division (OID), that assembles Toyota light commercial vehicles in Portugal, allows us to put forward a sub-hypothesis that fits into the analysis schema proposed in the First GERPISA International Program – "In short, GERPISA members considered that the plurality of models was much a plausible hypothesis deserving testing as that of the diffusion of a unique model (…)" (Boyer, Freyssenet, 2001: 42). So we add: and within Toyota itself, is it not true that different productive models co-exist – especially when delocalised – depending, amongst other factors, on the degree of Toyota participation – in terms of capital and technology transfer – in the local company (strong or weak) and on the markets to be reached (internal or external)? If so, what work system can we expect to find in a plant that presents such peculiar characteristics as this one?

The aim of the TeleRisk Project on labour relations and professional risks within the context of teleworking in Portugal – supported by IDICT – Institute for Development and Inspection of Working Conditions (Ministry of Labour), is to study the practices and forms of teleworking in the manufacturing sectors in Portugal. The project chose also the software industry as a reference sector, even though it does not intend to exclude from the study any other sector of activity or the so-called “hybrid” forms of work. However, the latter must have some of the characteristics of telework. The project thus takes into account the so-called “traditional” sectors of activity, namely textile and machinery and metal engineering (machinery and equipment), not usually associated to this type of work. However, telework could include, in the so-called “traditional” sectors, other variations that are not found in technologically based sectors. One of the evaluation methods for the dynamics associated to telework consisted in carrying out surveys by means of questionnaires, aimed at employers in the sectors analysed. This paper presents some of the results of those surveys. It is important to mention that, being a preliminary analysis, it means that it does not pretend to have exhausted all the issues in the survey, but has meant that it shows the bigger tendencies, in terms of teleworking practices, of the Portuguese industry.

This article is based on the lesson presented in the scope of academy activities in the area of Sociology (at FCT-UNL). It is intended to approach the controversies concerning the relation between technology and society (technological determinism, effect on employment, importance of the social behaviours in the definition of needs for new products and equipment), and on the most recent trends (over all, since middle of the last century) in terms of technological evolution and of its social and cultural change. Finally, this subject was dedicated to the presentation of the main factors that has lead to the development of the contribution of sociology for the training and education in engineering. Thus, one intends to acquire new elements on this area of knowledge also presented in other schools of engineering of other countries (for examples, United States and Holland), and how the theoretical beddings are been developed since the beginning of 20th century on the modalities of work organization that imply a cooperation between engineering and social sciences.

Recent studies continue to indicate the existence of a narrow relationship between flexible work organizations and the economic growth, in particular, Sweden and Germany. The measure of this relationship is many times the result of the value added per worker. Therefore, the causes of economic growth must be perceived from the interior of the company (work organization, technology, infrastructures, product design). On the other hand, the capacity of innovation can be perceived by the market through new products and services, and still significant changes with the introduction of new equipment and design of an efficient work organization. In this article it is analyzed the evolution of the productivity and employment levels in Portugal and other European countries, over all, during the decade of 90. An analysis for sector is made still. One verifies often that economic growth can be without employment growth. However, the growth can be obtained when if it reaches bigger added value and the efficiency can be verified when there are diminished costs for a same period of time, although that the labor productivity is also the pointer of the quality of life in a economy, therefore it represents the value produced by the work. Moreover, the total factors productivity is the measure of the technological and organizational progress (don’t includes only the technological investments). It is tried to get and to analyze the available statistics on these dimension in Portugal, concluding that Portugal presents an enterprise structure predominantly based on small and very small companies, a great number of which is market by a weak potential of adaptability, innovation and sustainability. It becomes urgent to take the non-material factors that integrate the productivity dimension, as factors of intervention for a benchmarking that allows a process of sustainable growth.

The Portuguese National Action Plan for Employment (NAP) is the main instrument for the labour market policy. It was adopted in 1998. The NAP transposes to the Portuguese reality the contents of such guidelines, with the adequate adjustments required by the national specificities, establishing objectives, quantified targets and action deadlines, as well as defining new programmes and measures. Therefore, the objectives of the labour market policy were focusing on the promotion of an adequate transition of the youngsters in active life, on the promotion of social and professional insertion and fight against long term unemployment and exclusion, on the improvement of basic and professional qualification of the working population in a perspective of lifelong training, namely as a way to prevent unemployment phenomena, and on the preventive management and follow-up of sectoral restructuring processes.

A propose for this article is to present information on the emergence of the knowledge field of sociology of work and labor studies in Portugal. The period of 1974-1984 produced an interesting bibliography in the fields of social stratification, labor conflicts and social history. However, and since the mid-1980s, significant changes have emerged. There took place an increased theoretical diversity and also there was a major preoccupation with the development of a more professional teaching of the discipline. At this time, the first graduated specialists in Sociology appeared in the labor market since 1980, working in municipalities, industrial firms, public health institutions, schools, or even in research and development (R&D) units. The Portuguese association in this field (APSIOT) organized many scientific meetings, debates with unionists, managers and politicians, beside the regular publication of review “Organizações e Trabalho” (Organization and Work) since 1989. It started the diffusion of a professional culture of sociologists who associate science and their occupation concerning themselves not only with scientific quality, but also with technical competence and social responsibility. At the same time, one could assist to the participation of sociologists in the social and organizational molding of new technologies in order to promote alternative production systems.

The resulting economic integration of industrial processes and manufacturing internationalisation lead several authors to argue that world economy is globalised. In this context, the approach to the divestment concept without an social and económical context, does not show a group of associated practices and representations. Choices and options are motivated by exogenous forces that pushes companies to determine strategies that stop capital investment on new equipment goods, or on other imaterial goods. This type of strategy is designated by "divestment". The social level of consequencies are not due to the closing down or de-localization of production units that are divesting, but can be materialised of efects that are irreversible. This means unemployment, de-skilling, labour precarization and even emergence of new forms of social exclusion in former industrialised regions.

Working teams in enterprise environment are considered as the most advanced forms of work organisation. This means the forms that can improve productivity quality of working life. Nevertheless, it prevail a slow development and dissemination of these advanced organisational forms in European companies. The reason for that lays in a complex linkage factors from social values to the economical pressures. But other factors are also related to the national systems of education training, to the different systems of industrial relations and technology policy.

At the last National Conference of Industrial Sociology in Portugal (in March 1999) was presented a paper on the topic of “foresight as a technology and employment policy instrument” (A.B. Moniz) where there was a reference to the need of development of this kind of tools and instruments. This need is clear when one should neutralize the negative effects of such policies, and could support the positive influences, especially with the main aims of improvement of quality of working life. Thus, is today possible to make a first balance of the application in Portugal of a type of foresight analysis exercise: the Delphi method. After some of the uses of this method in Portugal on the fisheries socio-economical system and on the relation between information society and employment, we present in this paper a first assessment of such experiments and present some recommendations for future uses of this foresight technique. We conclude that they must be applied within the context of socio-economical perspectives, and not only the technological ones, although they should include that dimension.

Taking into account the global trends towards vertical de-integration and functional integration, the WorTiS project is expected to be able to determine to what extent the Portuguese automobile industry is experiencing far-reaching changes as far as innovative (post-fordist) work systems are concerned. One of the objectives is to reach wider conclusions regarding the sector under analysis within a new multi-disciplinary approach, in connection with other research networks (namely, GERPISA and IMVP-MIT). It will recover relevant information in automobile companies located in Portugal (like, Toyota, Citröen, FIAT, Renault, Ford, VW, UMM), in order to understand how concrete practices have being developed in time, and update the scientific knowledge with the development of new case studies (Mitsubishi, AutoEuropa, Opel-GM, and other sub-contracting firms). is intended to present a new fieldwork methodology in order to analyse the variety, and contradictory character, of changes in work practices. The analysis would focus on the cases of automotive firms that operated, and are still operating, in Portugal. The effectiveness of such a tool will last far beyond the project itself.

The results presented in this article are related to the field of investigation defined inside the European TSER project on "Information Society, Work and Generation of New Forms of Social Exclusion " (SOWING). The thematic center of the project is connected with the question of the relations that exist between the introduction of information technologies (IT) and the changes in the waged labour as well as in the organisation of work systems. The introduction of these technologies transformed specially the activities on services as well as certain branches, where great changes of the organization of work for the next future assume, which are discussed within the margin of the debate on future forms of work. The tendencies within the occupational structures indicate an individualisation of the insecurities and an opening of the occupational carreers. For these reasons, the development of the occupational carreers is more and more bound to the biographical planning. The institutionalised occupational model is changing very strongly, which in the long term will take to social and cultural changes, not only in the professional life, but also in the private life.

The most significative text of the European Commission on the construction of a strategy for an Information Society is, undoubtly the document on “Job Opportunities in the Information Society”. The major dimension of the change process was not anymore the technological evolution one. Information society should integrate the social-economical dimensions with industries that use information and communication products and services, beside those of so-called “Information Society industries”. Is not only this sector that is growing in terms of employment, but also the other sectors can be also important ICT users. Employment in the information society leads the employment growth in EU. In this study are analysed the different national programs and strategies, and with particular relevance the Portuguese case.

The relation between work organisation and technological practices in auto industry is analysed in this article. The concept of “technological practice” in this sector is used to describe the specific ways of embedding information and communication technology applications into the organizational forms and cultural patterns. This concept was developed with the Sowing project (TSER, DG XII) and that approach included either the shop floor co-operation up to the regionally based networks of companies and supporting institutions. The authors studied different sectors in the automotive firms of different European countries (Germany, Belgium and Portugal): shopfloor and production lines, design and management and the local inter-relationships. It was underlined some evidencies of the different alternatives in terms of technological practices for the same sector. Much of the litterature try to disseminate an idea of a single (and optimum) organisational model for the same type of product. And here, even with the same type of technology, and of product (medium-high range), one can find different models, different cultures, different ways of organising the industrial structure (firms, regional institutions, R&D centres) in the same sector (auto industry).

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Working teams in enterprise environment are considered as the most advanced forms of work organisation. This means the forms that can improve productivity quality of working life. Nevertheless, it prevails a slow development and dissemination of these advanced organisational forms in European companies. The reason for that lays in a complex linkage factors from social values to the economical pressures. But other factors are also related to the national systems of education training, to the different systems of industrial relations and technology policy.

The choice over the Portuguese case studies was based on the sample constructed for the application of the firm questionnaires, during the second year of the SOWING project, 1999. This sample was fulfilled of firms among several activity sectors: textile, manufacturing, electronics, transports and software industry, based on NACE – codes (2 – digit level). Thus, we agreed to include in a new database the remaining questionnaires and construct a sample with 113 observations. Concerning the organisational change we make a distinction of three categories of change. First we analyse changes taking place at the inter-firm level (outsourcing, subcontracting, geographic relocation), followed by changes at the organisational level (deconcentration/decentralisation, reduction of hierarchical levels, introduction of cost and profit centres). The third kind of changes analysed will be those taking place at the workplace level (job enlargement/enrichment, changing character of work, work load). The Portuguese studied companies presents a relative uniform pattern considering the variables social competencies, practical knowledge, responsibility and specialized professional qualifications.

The increasing degree of inter-dependency and integration of economy at a global scale motivated the globalization of scientific and technological knowledge from manufacturing, to the marketing and the strategic management of companies that act as protagonists of these processes. Globalization of markets is inter-connected with intensive incorporation of knowledge in economy. In this sense the continuous evolution of the manufacturing industry structure for an increased high intensity technology elements, namely information and communication technologies, implies that these industrial sub-sectors are conditioning the global performance of economy, the productivity gains and as a consequence the levels of economical and employment growth. This study on “R&D, Innovation and Employment Creation” for the Portuguese Observatory of Employment and Vocational Training (IEFP-MQE) is updating information on the articulation between Job creation, innovation, technology, and R&D. A diagnosis of the state of national S&T research and of processes of technological and organizational innovation was made, as well of the interfacing structures between the knowledge sector and the economical activities. Were made 12 case studies at companies with some innovation activities, interviews to unionists and to Professional associations, and public offices. Was made also a survey to a selected sample of technological infrastructures.

The innovation in the employment behaviour is particularly clear in what concerns the sector composition of the employment changes: the persistent decrease of the industrial employment (even if within a framework of some recovery of the industrial product), a slight expansion in the employment on the tertiary sector, and an important growth of the employment in the construction and public works activities. We can identify then a considerable sector mutation concerning the industrial and the services sectors but also a growth of the atypical forms of employment. Portugal continues not being able to respond to the labour market needs (improvement in the education sector is critical to the catch-up process). The Portuguese cases studied point out to organisational changes supported by ICT, but not determined/induced by it. For most of the changes that were recently developed, ICT had an important role. We didn’t found explicit technological determinism in the relation between ICT and social exclusion.

The socio-economic subsystem encompassing fisheries may be defined as including not only the harvesting sector but also several related activities occurring both upstream (shipbuilding, gear manufacture) and downstream (processing, distribution and trade). But these closely interrelated economic activities can also be set within a much broader system which would include the ecological, institutional and political influences which frame economic behaviour. The value of this broader conceptualisation is that it treats fisheries not as an isolated and independent economic activity but as part of a more holistic and complex system. This broader perspective is of particular significance when attempting to examine the concept of regional dependence. The socio-economic subsystem for fisheries is dominated by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). And Peniche emerges as one of Portugal’s most important fishing ports whether measured in terms of the volume of landings or the total numbers of fishermen. It also has one of the highest levels of fisheries dependence of all coastal municipalities in Portugal with over 20% of its workforce currently engaged in fisheries related employment, faces a daunting and uncertain future. The social fabric of fisheries dependent communities also suffers serious damage; once again, the technocratic approach to management has no solutions to offer. It is essential, therefore, to turn away from the existing approach and to develop instead new forms of intervention; in short, to provide a new vision. This implies change not only to the policy process but also in the attitudes of the social actors and in the preoccupations of fisheries related research. An integrated approach is required based on participative action and the development of an integrated information network.

In this paper for a public debate promoted by the Portuguese President of Republic in 2000, we start from the basic definitions of information society and discuss the main measures proposed as targets in the firld of work and employment. Structural changes are analysed related with the economical and social dimensions of the information society, especially those related to the work organisation, education and training, and the labour markets. Finally recommendations are made on the topics of innovation, employment and development of information society.

This paper summarises the methodological approach and main results of the MARHE project (Employment and Human Resources in the Fisheries Socio-Economic System). This project had as its main aim the search for alternative futures for the fisheries sector in Portugal, with particular attention being paid to the human resources situation and the working and living conditions of the fisheries-dependent populations in the coastal areas. This is a particularly interesting case, since fisheries were once an important activity and they are now in deep recession, even though it is generally recognised that the future utilisation of maritime resources offer an immense potential. As part of the research, a Delphi exercise was implemented involving in two successive stages some of the leading actors and experts dealing with the sector in Portugal. Other initiatives were held in the context of the MARHE project providing direct and indirect inputs to the scenarios and recommendations that were put forward in the sequence of the Delphi exercise. Overall the activities described in the paper contributed to the mobilisation of major actors and to discussions that may have practical implication for the future of the sector, if certain conditions are now met in the follow up to the project.