Executive summary
The case begins with the protagonist, Joao Silva, in oslo for a meeting of personel directors of the subsidiaries of a large scandinavian multinational, Norge Electronics. Silva is the administrative director (finance and administration, HR, legal) of the division’s sales subsidiary – Norge electronics Portugal. Silva had been asked by the vice president of human resources to present to the personel directors what have been achieved in portugal. The evening before his presentation, Silva recieved a fax from a consultant he hired in Portugal with the preliminary results of climate study. The consultant’s report is not what Silva expected and, in fact, raises questions about the effectiveness of a series of change actions implemented over the past two years. The case describes in detail actions taken by Silva to ‘profesionalize’ HR management in the Portuguese sibsidiary.

The annual meeting of personel directors
In his hotel room in the city of Oslo, Joao Silva reviewed the presentation he would make the following day. Altough he felt prepared, he was somewhat apprehensive. He had just recieved by fax from a consultant in Lisbon the preliminary results of a climate study of Norge Portugal. He had commisioned the consultant’s study on the advice of Norge’s vice president of human resources, with the understanding that the results would be included in his presentation, as initial evidence of the progress made in HR management in his country. The next day, the annual meeting of Norge’s personel directors would take place. Silva would meet the personel directors of the other Norge subsidiaries for the first time. He hadn’t participated in the meeting before, mainly because Norge Portugal was a small subsidiary and Silva was not technically a personel manager. His title was Administrative Director; he was accountable for finance, control and