Safety management at the frontier: Cooperation with contractors in oil and gas companies

International reviews show the deepening of outsourcing (shifting from secondary to core processes) and, despite the legal hurdles implemented in developed and developing countries to control abuses, its strong connection to incremented job precarity and to the tendency to delegate the riskiest activities to sub-contractors. Through a mixed quanti-qualitative design, but essentially based in qualitative evidence, this paper compares the changes in the relationships with contractors that took place in 2012 in two oil and gas Patagonian subsidiaries when safety management systems were implemented. The comparison of these case studies highlights emerging hybrid forms of subcontracting conducive to more constructive and even cooperative ties between contracting and sub-contracted parties.