ABSTRACT
A former French colony, Tunisia has been a democratic republic since 1956. Islam is officially the state religion and Arabic is the national language. With an area of 163,610 km2 and an estimated population of 9.6 million in 2001, Tunisia is the smallest of the four countries composing the Maghreb in North Africa. Bordered to the west by Algeria and by Libya to the south and the east, Tunisia benefits from a large opening on the Mediterranean Sea and a close proximity to Europe. Lacking natural resources, Tunisia has relied heavily on human resources to develop its economy. Tunisia has now transformed itself from a protected economy into a newly industrialized and opened economy in order to attract more foreign direct investments. As foreign firms increase their involvement in Tunisia, they will need to build capabilities and utilize local skills. Knowledge of HRM and, more importantly perhaps, knowledge of the factors that have an impact on HRM in Tunisia, will become increasingly critical to the way business is done there and ultimately to its success. Thus, since 1995, Tunisian firms have been burdened outwardly by the need to compete simultaneously with firms in advanced countries and internally by the need to change the organizational structure and human resources systems. In addition, the recent economic directions and the increase in income provide a chance for the people to change their mentality and their quantity-oriented way of thinking to a quality-oriented approach. People, and employees in particular, were expected to become more self-reliant rather than looking to the state or their trade union for assistance. So we can see that, as firms and people’s way of thinking and behavior go through drastic changes, present day HRM is also going through a significant transformation.
