PERCEPTIONS OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN MANAGEMENT IN ROMANIA BEFORE 1989. EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY IN THE ROMANIAN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Defined as "the set of tacit norms and laws existing in a given society in relation to what is considered acceptable and tolerable in the employment relationship", the social management contract (SMC) has recently proved to be an interesting tool for an contextualized study of the relationship that the employee develops with his employer. This paper is based on the research results obtained by the author during her doctoral thesis at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada). In this thesis, we propose to study how the former social contract of Romania (that before the fall of communism) impregnates the current social contract in this country. To compare it with the new social contract, we analyzed the features of the old Romanian social contract. This analysis, which makes the object of this paper, was carried out in a constructivist approach, based on 39 interviews conducted in two companies of the automobile industry of the region of Sibiu, Romania. We have thus identified three main categories of characteristics of the old social contract (which we characterized as "paternalistic"): protection / security, hierarchy and community spirit. We will detail each of these characteristics in this paper. The theoretical and practical contributions of our study on the SMC before 1989 and its limitations will also be mentioned in the communication.