How do Japanese and French firms in steel industry address the institutional change and the globalization? Employment adjustment and age management in a downsizing context

Since the 1960s, downsizing has become a mode of adjustment widely used by corporate managements in the face of changing markets and economic competition (Raveyre 2005, Fayolle 2005, Lefresne and Sauviat 2008). It is an organization conscious use of permanent personnel reductions in an attempt to improve its efficiency and/or effectiveness (Cascio, 1993, Appelbaum, Close, Klasa, 1999, Freeman, 1999). Thus in various ways depending on the period and country in question, different management strategies have been applied in order to adjust human resources to company configurations and new work organisation systems. In particular, Steel industry has been engaged for a very long time in a downsizing process which has deeply transformed social and industrial relations, work and employment management. Once, these industry was owned and managed by big national groups (sometimes public) and employed a lot of workers at different levels of qualification. Now, a large movement of concentration leads to the emergence of transnational leader. Steel industry has become more and more a footloose industry, with high technological level.