Les relations sociales dans les multinationales françaises industrielles à l'Est transfert, hybridation ou laboratoire de nouvelles pratiques ?

This paper explores the place and role of human resources policies as key-elements for the differentiation of social regulation models at local level, between the sites of various French groups and their East European subsidiaries. It is based on an empirical survey of eight French multinationals belonging to three industrial sectors (automotive, energy, food-processing), and present in three new member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania). In order to specify those policies, we use an analytical framework based on the notions of hybridization and compromise forged by the approach in terms of Regulation and completed by a "micro-political" approach focusing on power relations and their influence on the way these policies are locally transferred. The main results of this enquiry are the following. Two models-types of management strongly correlated to the structure of property (shareholder / domestic) and the mode of governance (centralized / decentralized) are put into evidence. The survey also underlines the relevance of labor-management dialogue as a tool serving the firm's strategy. Finally, its specifies, for the different firms and their territories of location, several local variants of social regulation.