Quando le organizzazioni sono chiamate a far fronte al fallimento del mercato e delle reti sociali: il caso dei servizi per l'impiego

Abstract

In the arena where job seekers and firms are looking for each other, as well as it occurs in all spaces for economic action, according to Polanyi’s approach, which the new economic sociology reverted to, we can find three modes of regulation: the market, the social network and the organisation. Empirical research is aimed at showing which mix is prevailing in any particular situation. Two recent surveys carried out in some Italian provinces, let us to see, on the one hand, how people having different personal and professional characteristics are looking for jobs and find their jobs and, on the other, how firms having different economic features are looking for workers to hire. Those behaviours of job-seeking and job-finding can be grouped according to the triad market, network and organisation. Both for job-seekers and firms social networks and personal activity are the most used and the most successful ways to achieve their goals, but both job-seekers with the weakest characteristics and firms having vacancies difficult to fill are by far more likely to address public and/or private employment services. Therefore, the results of those surveys prove once again the hypothesis that organisations are called to cope with the economic and social problems when market forces and networks failed. Thus organisations have to be well-built to face situations that both market and networks were not able to solve. This is an important lesson not only for public employment services, but more generally for all public policies.