L’entreprise libérée et ses doubles : Mythe(s) et/ou réalité(s) ?

Abstract

This article examines a trend in managerial practices that has had some success in recent times: the freedom-form company and its doubles. In a context where the question of discomfort at work is the focus, this trend appears to have all the characteristics of a somewhat exotic vogue, if it is not actually a sort of staging, detached from reality and masking it. The inquiry, conducted with a computer-related business fine-tunes this image, without however slipping into some form of enchantment. It shows that the freedom-form company and its doubles gain in being understood as ushering new accountability and responsibility assumption standards into the workplace. The areas studied try to play the game of “liberation” through organizational actions that are binding on employees who, for their part, more or less take them on board. In concrete terms, this “liberation” stands revealed in the form of a metamorphosis of individualization at work which, at one and the same time, tries to go further in terms of coupling accountability and empowerment processes, all in correcting some of the excesses of earlier trends. Given this, could it be the rise of this new managerial vogue is nothing short of irresistible? In reality, not at all. Employees turn out to be ambivalent, caught between a partial internalisation of managerial categories and their often lively – and in themselves paradoxical – challenges. Thus, finally, while the freedom-form company allows managers to recover a democratic demand – they, at the same time, in limiting themselves to that horizon – run the risk of arousing growing discontent.

Keywords

• management
• individualization
• assuming responsibility
• hardship