Conservative RH: a study on people management changes in companies established in Brazil

Theorists and managers in the area are concerned with what changes can contribute to the management of human resources (ARH) in organizations, and also with the ARH’s own contribution to organizations. According to Lawler (2011), ARH has sought to play a more strategic role in organizations, but its practices were not designed with this in mind. To the extent that ARH, both as a practical field of Business Administration and as a teaching and research area, observes the need to consider the context, studies dedicated to verifying national specificities emerge. Considering that: (a) organizations face a growing imperative to redesign themselves, seeking agility and adapting more quickly in the face of an increasingly dynamic context; (b) theorists have pointed out the need for changes in ARH; (c) practitioners have been looking for ways to achieve this alignment; and (d) local peculiarities influence this movement of change, a question arises: In view of the Brazilian contextual peculiarities, are organizations promoting changes in the ARH? The 92 changes identified were relatively dispersed among the different sizes and segments of the organizations surveyed. In fact, we were surprised that organizations that make intensive use of technology, such as computing and telecommunications, did not appear prominently in initiatives for change, since the literature highlights the technological factor as a driver of changes. . The results of the present research point out that the changes are not very disruptive and transformational, according to a conservative profile where a high isoformism is established.