Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales

Consulting in Spanish corporate capitalism and its transition: from senior state officials to the new fund manager

2025-06-30T07:13:41+00:00

This article examines consulting in Spain from both micro and macro-social perspectives, linked to the need for external expert knowledge aimed at improving the organization and rationalization of resources, as well as influencing the configuration of corporate capitalism in each country. These consulting firms emerged from the global hegemony of managerial expert knowledge and were integrated into specific business schools and educational institutions during the Francoist desarrollismo period, in parallel with the influx of foreign capital and enterprises. The 2008 economic crisis, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, have been central to the transformation of the consulting sector and to the decline of the political elites’ previous centrality in corporate decision-making processes. From this point onward, advisory functions increasingly shifted from traditional consultancies to fund managers, who have come to play a pivotal role in the reorganization of the business fabric and in the shaping of corporate culture.

Sustainability and green consulting industry: institutionalizing a corporate response

2025-06-30T07:13:37+00:00

This article analyzes how the growing demand for sustainability in response to the socio-environmental crisis has shaped a market-driven response led by corporate actors, particularly major consulting firms. Drawing on a qualitative approach based on interviews, document analysis, and digital environments, it examines the consolidation of a multilateral architecture promoted by organizations such as the UN, ILO, and OECD, and its articulation with a sustainability industry that translates these guidelines into “green” goods and services. Within this framework, green consulting plays a central role in the interpretation, standardization, and certification of sustainable practices. The analysis shows how sustainability functions simultaneously as a symbolic and economic good, whose circulation structures new forms of competition, differentiation, and legitimation within contemporary capitalism. The article thus contributes to understanding the institutionalization of sustainability as a field of normative, symbolic, and commercial struggles.

Professional trajectories in computer consulting from a gender perspective

2025-06-30T07:13:39+00:00

The technology sector and computer consulting specifically, is a masculinized sector. The objective of this article is to make visible the difficulties that women face in this sector, reviewing their trajectories and working conditions, their access to training, the profession and their development as personnel specialized in managing IT projects, advising and implementing solutions in the field of computer consulting. To know the characteristics of this professional field, the methodological approach has been based on carrying out 8 in-depth interviews between computer consulting staff, university students and professors, and managers of consulting companies. Among the conclusions found, the need to take measures to alleviate the lack of women in the profession from the training phase is evident, raising awareness of the importance of this sector that is constantly growing and that can be a great opportunity for job placement.

Consulting and women in Spain. Moderate feminism in search of intergender balance in organizations

2025-06-30T07:13:46+00:00

This text tries to identify the vision of women consultants on the promotion of women's leadership in organizations and its relationship with business success, through the discourse analysis of works corresponding to management literature written by consultants in the period 2019-2022. The aim is to identify what vision these authors have of successful leadership, and if this is related to the promotion of women's leadership. In other words, we will try to find out what these authors consider that women can contribute to the success and good management of business organizations. Through the analysis of the tips and advice that women consultants prescribe in their works, and based on their professional experience in business advice, the management narratives that allow them to build the idea of business success will be addressed. From the analysis, different issues emerge to be studied: the consultants' conception of gender equality, their relationship with feminism, the issue of motherhood and the couple, female leadership, among others.

Overexposed workers: Visibility drive, paradoxical autonomy and competitive individualism in the high-end consulting industry

2025-06-30T07:13:40+00:00

The aim of this article is to explore sociologically how managerial strategies that promote and normalize the constant public overexposure of workers operate. We will focus on the consulting sector, both for its influence in generating global organizational trends and for its capacity to reflect the transformations taking place in the world of work. To this end, we have developed a qualitative study consisting of an autoethnography in two companies in the sector and a series of interviews with consultants. The strategies of overexposure analyzed in this text are an expression of logics of power functioning that condition the experience of workers, contributing to consolidate forms of individualistic subjectivation prototypical of the contemporary neoliberal context. They are based on a paradoxical autonomy and logics of pressure and horizontal competition that operate from visibility and meritocratic rhetorics.

Convergences between CrossFit and corporate culture: the production of work subjectivities through training and physical activity

2025-06-30T07:13:43+00:00

This article explores the convergence between sport and the business world that has intensified since the 1980s. In connection with the advance of ideas and values linked to neoliberalism, companies have used sport in many of their functional departments, influencing the creation of business ideas, symbols and strategies. Due to its relevance and current spread, we have selected a specific sporting modality – CrossFit –. This study analyses eight trainers' manuals to identify ideas and values that converge with the business environment. Through categories such as discipline, personal improvement, competitiveness and performance, a thematic analysis is carried out that seeks to explore how the messages transmitted can influence the behavior of practitioners and align with business values. The findings show how CrossFit reinforces key values for companies, consolidating itself as a component of the "entrepreneurial device" that links sport and business.

Collective bargaining, power resources and distributional outcomes. The case of the Wage Councils in Uruguay

2025-06-30T07:13:53+00:00

This article analyses the relationship between the power constructed by the Uruguayan working class and its impact on economic inequality, based on the power resources theory, interviews and statistical analysis. How have the power resources of the working class been shaped? what is the relationship between this setup and inequality? The findings show how the unitary and solidarity-based character of sectoral unions strengthens associational power. The Wage Councils have been the result of recognised struggles in the country's institutions, which allow for inclusive wage bargaining. Effective societal power is observed, which has resulted in a strong programmatic alliance between the Frente Amplio and the PIT-CNT. It is concluded that the Wage Councils have had a positive impact on income distribution and that they coincide with the phase of deepening institutional power in favour of workers.

Working, but poor: Increasing female labour participation and low income in urban Argentina

2025-06-30T07:13:52+00:00

The article aims to examine the phenomenon of low-paid workers and its link with the processes of labour market segmentation and gender inequalities in urban Argentina, from a structuralist perspective.

This paper relies on microdata from the Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina for the period 2017-2022. A descriptive analysis was carried out on the performance of the employment rate and the levels of incidence of low-income work for the period analysed. In addition, a multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine the determinants of low-income employment. We conclude that women are more likely to be low-income earners than men, and that, in the context of a segmented labour market, this relationship is specified by looking at the type of occupational insertion of workers.

Analyzing customer´s impact on financial institutions

2025-06-30T07:13:50+00:00

In this study we address the changes that have taken place in recent years in the role of the customer, within a new, much more competitive model that gives priority to flexibility in all areas. Specifically, we analyze, through the discourse of workers and documentation of the sector, how these transformations impact on financial institutions in our country, conditioning internal strategies and the work carried out by employees and even impacting on the configuration of the spaces themselves.

Study of labour situation, conditions and expectations in relation to financial fragility of households in Spain

2025-06-30T07:13:54+00:00

Financial fragility of households (FFH) has steadily increased over the last few decades, becoming a challenge for the economies of Western countries. Although the literature has analysed various labour determinants, little attention has been paid to labour conditions and expectations, and FFH has often been considered an unidimensional phenomenon. This article relates the FFH in Spain, using a multidimensional and gradual index that adopts both an objective and subjective approach to its measurement, with various labour situations, conditions, and expectations. Using a sample of households from the Survey of Financial Competences, the results show that FFH is higher among the unemployed and the self-employed (compared to those employed by others). Moreover, high volatility in labour expectations is associated with an increase in FFH, regardless of the measurement method.

Bogdanich, Walt y Forsythe, Michael (2023). La Consultora. Cómo McKinsey dirige el mundo. Ediciones Península, 528 páginas.

2024-09-16T08:16:59+00:00

There is a popular saying: ‘what is little talked about matters a lot’. This is the idea
the authors of the book that will be the subject of this review: La Consultora.
The Consultant. How McKinsey runs the world (2023).

Mazzucato, Mariana y Collington, Rosie (2024). El gran engaño. Cómo la industria de la consultoría debilita las empresas, infantiliza a los gobiernos y pervierte la economía. Barcelona: Editorial Taurus, 392 páginas.

2024-08-31T10:02:04+00:00

Prieto, Carlos (2024). La metamorfosis del trabajo y de la relación salarial. El caso español. Madrid: Fundación Primero de Mayo y La Catarata, 332 páginas.

2025-06-30T07:13:47+00:00

Alonso, Luis Enrique y Fernández Rodríguez, Carlos Jesús (2024). Capitalismo y personalidad: Transformaciones de la identidad en la empresa contemporánea. Madrid: Catarata, 240 páginas.

2025-06-30T07:13:48+00:00

The professional sector of consulting: vectors of work and corporate culture transformation.

2025-06-30T07:13:36+00:00