December 2015
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 122
Editorial
By Pascal LEFEBVRE
Editorialiste
OVERLOOKED…
Toward preventive occupational medicine?
By Yvan Barel ,
associate professor, member of the Laboratory of Economy and Management Nantes-Atlantic, University of Nantes
and Sandrine Frémeaux ,
professor at Audencia-Nantes School of Management
To cope with occupational health problems, with their human and financial costs, it is urgent to intervene upstream in the chain of organizational and managerial causes. The 2011 reform of occupational medicine in France has given a boost to multidisciplinary, preventive actions. How do workplace doctors position themselves in relation to these recommendations? The three distinct profiles of these doctors analyzed herein - biomedicals, activists and progressives - are far from uniformly receptive to a shift toward preventive medicine. The training of occupational therapists as well as the management of occupational health services and of firms should be reviewed in the effort to back this preventive approach.
“Flexicurity” and mutual termination of the employment contract: From an oxymoron to ambiguous practices
By Brigitte Pereira ,
professor of Law and Corporate Social Responsibility, EM Normandie-HDR, and associate researcher, Laboratoire Métis , Institut d’Administration des Entreprises, Caen
Flexicurity, genuine Community labour market policy, is to increase both flexibility managerial for the optimal functioning of businesses and a guarantee of securing career paths for employees. In France, this policy has experienced a gradual build-up with the establishment of the conventional breach of the employment contract in 2008. This device was a great success and led us to analyze its implementation. However, the conventional breach of the employment contract covers many facets and does not necessarily respond to the quest for flexibility companies. In fact, as early as analysis of the device, we see a willingness to flexibilise the functionning of companies unless the result is certain: the conventional breach of the employment contract, flexibility tool coexists with other standards, which leads to a set of standards sometimes conflicted. In addition, while breaking the amicable resolution of the contract of employment is intended to reduce the litigation, it is not only impossible, but decisions have developed in recent years. A comparison is then made with the judicial practice, which reflects the difficulties of transposition of the Danish example of flexicurity, cited by the European Union.
A sociotechnical analysis of the French fast-neutron reactor program: Successive assessments
By Claire Le Renard ,
engineer/researcher in sociology, Groupe de Recherche Énergie Technologie Société, Électricité de France
This review of the assessments made of France’s fast-neutron reactor program uses methodologies developed by the sociology of science and techniques to shed light on trends in assessing nuclear reactor demonstrations. Assessments were intended to attest the feasability, safety and viability (technical as well as economic) of this technology, which holds promise as a potentially inexhaustible source of energy in the future. Till the mid-1970s, developing the nuclear industry was deemed urgent, and the priority was to prove its “technical” feasability through demonstration reactors. Since that time, the assessment of fast-neutron reactors has sought to confirm their technical and economic viability and vouch for their safety. As an analysis of Superphenix shows, it is difficult to pursue all three objectives, since assessments are conducted in a changing context, as the weights of various criteria are continuously reassigned - whence questions about the implicit set of specifications used by those who perform reactor demonstrations. free download
TRIAL BY FACT
Assessing the societal impact of research in order to manage it: ASIRPA and agronomic research
By Pierre-Benoit JOLY
Université Paris-Est, LISIS, CNRS, ESIEE Paris, INRA, UPEM, 77454 Marne-La-Vallée
Laurence COLINET
INRA Collège de Direction, 75007 Paris
Ariane GAUNAND
INRA, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble
Stéphane LEMARIÉ
INRA, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble
Philippe LARÉDO
Université Paris-Est, LISIS, CNRS, ESIEE Paris, INRA, UPEM, 77454 Marne-La-Vallée, University of Manchester, MIIOR, MBS, Harold Hankins Building, Manchester, UK M13 9PL
and Mireille MATT
INRA, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble
The research-intervention, conducted by the authors in the French National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), had the objective of designing, and experimenting with, an approach to evaluating the social and economic effects of research. Based on a conception (inspired by theories about innovation) of this impact as a process, the methodology entailed using standardized case studies to draw a relation between the advantages of detailed descriptions and the generalization of findings. Although measuring the effects of research (in particular non-economic ones) is not abandoned, this project sought to better understand how these effects are generated and to identify the diversity of their paths of impact and the critical points in them. Thirty case studies were made and submitted to a cross-sectional analysis. This ambitious approach was designed at INRA and experimented there. Interest in the project was aroused in the departments of research that used ASIRPA for their own assessment. After presenting this approach and major findings, its limits are pointed out along with possibilities for developing it.
Work and health: The necessary shift of management toward “reality”
By Sabine Suarez-Thomas ,
doctoral student, CREG (EA4580), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour
This research-intervention breaks with the paradigm for managing psychosocial risks so as to prevent mental health problems among people at work. Work in its full complexity must be taken into account: the difference between actual and prescribed work, the individual dimension and work groups. This bears advantages when drawing up a strategy for everyday management. Management thus comes to be seen as an orchestration of how individuals work. Taking exception to simplified managerial conceptions, this approach is in line with changes in managerial procedures for enabling people to “do a good job”. During this project, tongues were loosened, work groups received a boost, and the health of some wage-earners improved considerably. However this research-intervention was hampered by upper management’s fears of taking the risk of changing its way of exercising power and tapping a source of managerial know-how different from what is widely diffused.
Mosaics
The mystery of Danone’s double project finally revealed
On Jérôme Tubiana’s, La Saga Danone, un projet économique et social à l’épreuve des faits (Lattès, 2015).
By Michel Berry
Is the role of research professors to make accountancy techniques accessible?
On Bernard Colasse’s Dictionnaire de comptabilité. Compter/conter l’entreprise ( Éditions La Découverte, 2015) .
By Morgane Le Breton
The useless person
On the good usage of economics: On Pierre-Noël Giraud’s L’homme inutile. Du bon usage de l’économie (Odile Jacob, 2015).
By Claude Riveline
The silence of managers, a survey on a malaise
On Denis Monneuse’s Le Silence des cadres. Enquête sur un malaise (Vuibert, 2014).
By Sébastien Stenger
The conspiracy of the useless
On Marie-Anne Dujarier’s Le Management désincarné. Enquête sur les nouveaux cadres de travail (La Découverte, 2015).
By Arnaud Tonnelé