Perfil e perspectivas do trabalho no "complexo das tecnologias de informação": a produção de softwares no Rio Grande do Sul

Resumo

The notion of "Information Technology (IT) 'complex'" underlines the
complementarities and interdependence of a wide range of industrial
activities and services. In this "complex", software plays an increasing
role. This paper is based on a research concerned with labor force in
software-houses in Rio Grande do Sul. In this Brazilian state, a significant
domestic software industry has emerged, from the eighties onwards. We
describe its main characteristics, emphasizing the key role of skilled labor
for the performance of these firms, as well as the strategies employed
by local software-houses to face the scarcity of this resource. The analysis
of manpower and labor relations takes into account, primarily, the
specificity of products and processes and the dynamics of technical
change in the IT. Software activities favor the constitution of a specific
labor market segment at the regional level, with distinctive features that
we try to analyze. The perspectives of this segment, however, rely on the
very sustainability of this set of firms, which currently is facing a shift in
patterns of competition. In the mid nineties, the major International software
corporations (the so-called BOPS group) entered Brazilian market.
Whatever the outcomes of this increasing competition, the technical
capabilities the local software-houses have been able to generate — as
externalities of their own trajectories up to these days — have remarkable
environmental importance and they might even give support to new IT
related activities