Et si c’était quand même s’engager ? Une analyse des enjeux et modalités d’entrée des collaborateurs en mécénat de compétences

Abstract

Skills sponsorship is characterised by a company making an employee available during his or her working hours for the benefit of a general interest organisation. The study on skills sponsorship conducted by Injep and Lise-Cnrs sought to fill gaps in the scientific literature on the types of commitment mobilised in this context (Renault-Tinacci/Vasconcelos, 2020). The study favoured an ethno-sociological approach, based on 52 biographical interviews conducted between April and July 2019 with employees of French companies, mainly in the Ile-de-France region, seconded to the disposal of associations via this arrangement. The article’s aim is to study how joining a skills sponsorship scheme may be seen as an associative “commitment” in the same way as another commitment to an association, such as volunteering, and to use this as a means of deconstructing the promotional rhetoric’s surrounding skills sponsorship. What leads people to take action and motivates them to choose one organisation over another? The research shows that while we cannot conclude that there are no dimensions linked to commitment when employee volunteers enter skills sponsorship, we cannot claim that skills sponsorship covers them all: it is the predominant place of the relationship to work for the actors which, mirroring the dysfunctions of the labour market, characterises it.

Keywords

• philanthropy
• skills sponsorship
• commitment trajectories
• association