December 2017
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 130
OVERLOOKED
Increasing the innovative capabilities of medium-sized companies: the case of Matfer Bourgeat
By Tony DA MOTTA CERVEIRA
Directeur de l’innovation chez Matfer Bourgeat
and Christophe MIDLER
Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Centre de recherche en gestion de l’École polytechnique
Recent studies show both the importance and fragility of medium-sized companies in the current context of intensive innovation. This paper analyzes possible answers to this fragility through the case of a world leader medium-sized firm. After a diagnosis of its contemporary challenges, we analyze the redesign of its innovation processes through an interactive research cooperation. The case reveals the relevance and actionnability of contemporary theories on innovation management in the context of medium-sized firms.
The process of constructing a project for producing electricity from wind power in Haute Saintonge and its social unacceptability
By Béatrice Canel-Depitre ,
NIMEC, Le Havre University
In front of increase of conflicts finding big environmental projects, approval of social players quickly became an essential condition in their realization, raising social acceptability to rank of priorities. To illustrate my search on social acceptability, I chose to study project of presence of an industrial wind farm on municipalities of Allas Bocage and Nieul-le-Virouil in Haute Saintonge. Methodology rests on participating observation which authorizes understanding of a group. If the social acceptability is a fragile and slow process to be built, the social unacceptability takes root durably. My problem rests on the process of construction of the social unacceptability, fruit of a different logic between promoter and local actors. My results allow me to highlight the processual dimension of the social unacceptability of one project.
Between noise and silence, engineering a dialog about work: Maintenance projects in a high-risk industry
By Mathieu Detchessahar
Stéphanie Gentil
Anouk Grevin
and Benoît Journé
Nantes University (IAE ‒ LEMNA, Laboratoire d’Économie et de Management de Nantes)
High reliability organizations are now subject to economic and industrial constraints that they have to dovetail with the imperatives of safety and security. They have to pay constant attention to their operational activities. More than ever, their key preoccupation is the question of the right combination between a high level of prescriptions and an ongoing series of contingencies. This intervention research has been conducted since 2013 in a high-risk industrial plant with problems of keeping the deadlines set for maintenance work and with tensions related to the quality of life at the workplace. What is remarkable about this case is that, despite a “culture of security” very attentive to coordinating operations, the organization has difficulty imagining how to design the conditions for a genuine dialog on workplace activities. To improve an organization’s overall performance, it does not suffice to set up ever more arrangements for coordination. On the contrary, an overinstrumentation of communications can become counterproductive as work remains silent while communications make ever more noise. How to engineer opportunities for discussing work so as to address the many tensions running through high-reliability organizations?
TRIAL BY FACT
A study on the hidden virtues of being late: A sociological view of the strategic use of time pressures in organizations
By Denis JEAMBRUN
Are delays regularly experimented by major state programmes synonymous with failure or, paradoxically, would they be a strategy for success? Through the appearance of delays in the context of a programme of drones, this article puts forward the emergence of a strategy using these delays. The constraints and interests of the players push them to tolerate, accept and even implement this strategy despite the disadvantages associated with the situation.
When for-profit and non-profit organizations try to cooperate: The hard quest to find common objectives
By Emmanuelle Dutertre ,
adjunct professor at ESSCA, École de Management;
and Bernard Jullien ,
associate professor at Bordeaux University and scientific advisor of the chair on distribution and automobile services at ESSCA, École de Management
Emmanuelle Dutertre , adjunct professor at ESSCA, École de Management; and Bernard Jullien , associate professor at Bordeaux University and scientific advisor of the chair on distribution and automobile services at ESSCA, École de Management The rollout of a service innovation in an automobile distribution network depended on developing relations outside the for-profit sector. Despite the enthusiasm aroused by the prospect of working with nonprofit organizations in social work, it turned out to be very complicated to collaborate. By focusing on the initial phase for setting up this cooperation, the difficulties are pointed out of defining a stable set of “common objectives” that were indispensable for developing these interorganizational relations. A major issue was how to move from an exploratory toward an operational phase.
IN QUEST OF A THEORY
Firms: The loyalty of employees and their freedom of speech on the social media
By Brigitte Pereira ,
Laboratoire Métis, EM Normandie
The defence of freedom of expression of employees covers important both that freedom is part of fundamental rights, including on the Internet. However, new issues are raised when considering freedom of expression of employees through digital social networks inside and outside the company. Indeed, the freedom of expression of employees can understand phrases leading to damage to the company in terms of image and reputation of the company. Practice informs us about the difficulties of balancing respect for freedom of expression, that of loyalty between employers and employees and the protection of e-reputation of the company. The increasingly blurred border between working life and private life, and that between public and personal life makes this difficult balance that companies are moving towards the development of charters and guides for the use of online social networks.
OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES
Supplely regulating nuclear risks: The origins of a French exception (1960-1985)
By Michaël Mangeon ,
Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) and Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS;
and Frédérique Pallez ,
Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS
Michaël Mangeon , Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) and Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS; and Frédérique Pallez , Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS France has a historical tradition of codifying rules and regulations into an elaborate corpus of public law applied by a powerful administration. However the nuclear industry seems to have been spared this tradition for a long time. This analysis of the development and operation of the French system for regulating nuclear risks between 1960 and 1985 brings to light a suppleness that was reflected in the first rules, standards and orientations for this risk-management. This French exception has two explanations: the structure of the network of actors institutionally involved in regulations; and the political, industrial and social context in which the “small world” of nuclear safety evolves. This analysis leads to thoughts about how the French system for regulating risks is evolving in the current context.
Supplely regulating nuclear risks: A testimony
By Pierre Messulam ,
assistant general manager, Transilien-SNCF
Michaël Mangeon , Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) and Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS; and Frédérique Pallez , Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, i3 UMR CNRS France has a historical tradition of codifying rules and regulations into an elaborate corpus of public law applied by a powerful administration. However the nuclear industry seems to have been spared this tradition for a long time. This analysis of the development and operation of the French system for regulating nuclear risks between 1960 and 1985 brings to light a suppleness that was reflected in the first rules, standards and orientations for this risk-management. This French exception has two explanations: the structure of the network of actors institutionally involved in regulations; and the political, industrial and social context in which the “small world” of nuclear safety evolves. This analysis leads to thoughts about how the French system for regulating risks is evolving in the current context.
Mosaics
The ethics of consent: Ricoeur in management territory
On Pierre-Olivier Monteil’s, Éthique et philosophie du management (Toulouse: Éditions Érès, 2016)
By Guillaume Chappuis
Psychosocial risks in organizations and workplace health
On Yves Clot’s, Travail et pouvoir d’agir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2017)
By Damien Collard and Rachel Boichot
Four roads to discovering management’s cultural dimension
On Pierre Dupriez and Blandine Vanderlinden’s (eds.), Au coeur de la dimension culturelle du management (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017)
By Yasmine Saleh
What should big groups do to survive start-ups in general and “unicorns” in particular?
On Jean-Louis Beffa’s, Se transformer ou mourir. Les grands groupes face aux start-ups (Paris: Seuil, 2017)
By Jacques Sarrazin
The jubilee of the sociology of organizations: The special, 50th-anniversary issue of the journal Entreprise et Histoire ( Entreprises et Histoire , 84, september 2016, Éditions Eska)
By Jérôme Tubiana