Portuguese Management Between Global Rhetoric and Local Reality: The Case of Human Resource Management

Although the gap between rhetoric and reality is not a specific human resource management (HRM) feature, the disconnection between discourse and action seems to have reached unusual stages in this case. Not much is known about HRM in Portugal, but it is clear that Portuguese academics and practitioners have extensively adopted the global HRM rhetoric. With an environment apparently unfavorable to the HRM normative model, this paper examines the ways in which global HRM rhetoric meets Portuguese reality.