She questioning the forms of work organization and the mode of management of companies has long been an impasse in public debate. This observation, stated at the opening of the collective work What do we know about work? (Presses de Sciences Po, 608 pages, 22 euros), establishes that, due to the upheavals crystallized by the Covid-19 crisis, it is no longer possible today to maintain our organizations and our ways of making them function as they are. However, if the need to question our current managerial schemes seems inevitable, the path to take to achieve this is significantly more complex.
The time when Henri Fayol (1841-1925) and Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) defined depersonalized management, based on procedure, verticality and the definition of tasks, is not so long ago. Developments in this model, ultimately quite coherent and, in some ways, effective, have improved the concept to make it more efficient – or more acceptable –, but have formatted work organizations by recognizing a central element that the Covid crisis- 19 called into question: the unity of place, action and time.
Today’s management has retained a determining “physical” dimension. The emergence of a hybrid world of work, both face-to-face and remotely, finally touches the heart of dominant managerial thinking in its very structure, which made it inseparable from the organization of work. For the moment, this profound transformation concerns a quarter of employees, but this share could reach half, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of Human Resources Directors.
The demographic reality and accelerated digitalization are shaking up an established order that mass unemployment and social protection models had frozen. Since the 1980s, the succession of crises has led organizations to maintain a managerial functioning that is sometimes questionable but little contested, because it is centered on the need to find and then keep a job, despite growing dissatisfaction with the connection to work. The rejection of pension reform seemed to say: “Work longer, why not, but not under these conditions. »
New thinking
In an article devoted to the effects of ” proximity management “, Laurent Cappelletti, professor at the CNAM, indicates that the quality of life at work is measured by six criteria: working conditions, organization, communication-coordination, time management, training and professional development, and strategic implementation. Management is the means to put these elements into action coherently. But the configuration has changed: the end of mass unemployment calls into question this classic system, with individuals more aware of their power vis-à-vis organizations, of their capacity to impose structural changes according to their own criteria. . It is also interesting to note that it is often the most restrictive professions which have first felt the recruitment shortages.
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