How aggressively are major Italian companies expanding outside of Italy?
How does this affect their human capital agendas? RD: Companies are expanding outside of Italy quite aggressively and are moving in three major directions. Companies in the financial and manufacturing sectors are looking mainly at central European countries in terms of where to build their manufacturing and distribution capabilities. Many midsize companies are also looking at China – not just as a place to develop products, but much more as a market for selling their products. And very recently, companies have been looking at the US as a new opportunity to do some shopping from a production and distribution point of view. SN: Many medium-sized companies in Italy are expanding very fast abroad, but their approach to managing human capital is sometimes the same as it was when they were small, and many haven’t developed the management systems they need to oversee these larger entities. Often, they need to develop new organizational structures, rewards systems and performance management sy
