The Economic Calculation of Value of Firms in the Labor Market: Case Studies in the Information Technology Sector
Author: Azambuja, Lucas R., azambuja81@gmail.com
Department: Sociology
University: University of São Paulo, Brazil
Supervisor: Nadya Araujo Guimarães
Year of completion: 2013
Language of dissertation: Portuguese
Keywords:
new economy
, labor demand
, labor market
, firms
Areas of Research:
Economy and Society
, Organization
, Work
Abstract
In the last few decades, an increasing number of social scientists have defended the idea that we are witnessing the beginning of a new stage of the historical development of capitalism, the so-called new economy. Among other aspects, the new economy has been characterized by profound changes within organizations and the labor world that are related to the emergence and diffusion of information technologies. The present thesis contributes to our understanding of the new economy through a well-defined analytical interest in the economic calculation of values that are realized by information technologies firms in the labor market. This analytical interest is reflected in three research questions: What and how are the conditions articulated by socio-technical networks of firms, structure their abilities to economic calculation of values? What economic and economically-relevant values do these firms resort to set the value and therefore their demand in the labor market? And what procedures and practices do these firms adopt to classify and judge the supply of labor and plan the realization of their demand? In order to answer these three questions, we carried out four case studies with companies from different segments of the information technology sector. All of the cases are located in the city of Porto Alegre (Brazil) or in the metropolitan area. Based on the analysis of data collected, the thesis concludes with a reflection on the value of labor as a commodity in the context of the new economy and also discusses the development of an economic sociology approach about firm behavior in the labor market.
