TESTIFYING

 
Dialog with a man with convictions

André Bergeron interviewed by Bernard Colasse and Francis Pavé

Holding a union card since he was fourteen years and twenty days(!) old, André Bergeron, secretary general of Force Ouvrière from 1963 to 1989, was the “best liked labor union leader in France”. This interview outlines a life in the service of wage-earners. The Spanish Civil War, the Popular Front, World War II and then Liberation, the reconstruction of the working class movement and the creation of FO (in sibling rivalry with the Communist CGT), the invention of the Unemployment Fund, the 1968 Grenelle Agreement… Bergeron evokes the social history of the 20th century. We meet Léon Jouhaud and Cardinal Lustiger, Irving Brown and the young Jacques Chirac, Mitterrand and Charles de Gaulle. During that period, which already seems so far away, captains of industry still negotiated, ministers had the power to make decisions, and the union rank-and-file followed its leaders. À changing France was opening toward the world. How to explain such a long career in a world of work and labor relations in the throes of such deep changes? Bargaining skills, keeping one’s word and, above all, solid convictions: this is the creed of a leading actor in his era.

 TRIAL BY FACT

 
The factory that might not be relocated: Intervening in favor of jobs through know-how

Francis Ginsbourger

France no longer has room for factories of mass production that, cut off from their marketing network, lack feedback from it. Once their know-how tends to become widespread, such factories no longer learn. They have already met their fate. For a firm to learn to do and, even more, to learn how to have things done, its wage-earners have to learn. Intervening for jobs through know-how implies debating the various ways of collective learning and recognizing the skills and qualifications of each and all. The goal? Not illusory alternatives to plant relocations but, instead, the invention of different ways for organizing the complementarity between what is relocated offshore and what is kept local. The future is open to “platforms of industrialization” that articulate design, manufacturing and marketing and that require a “knowing how to have done” and not just a “knowing how to do”. This is the price to pay to keep a factory from being moved offshore.

 
Learning coordination: Health networks

Corinne Grenier

Health networks form for the purpose of providing innovative responses to poorly known or complicated pathologies. They give rise to new ways of organizing group actions around patients: decompartmentalize health professions, boost cooperation, place the patient at the center of concern, look for supplementary resources, circulate knowledge, improve quality, reduce costs… But this slow, tricky process starts out with an informal period when parties gradually define the reasons for forming a group and draw up the first procedures for collectively working together. Few initiatives move beyond this critical phase of improving interpersonal relationships, which is never neutral. It involves redefining “occupational territories” and necessitates a managerial approach, to which health professionals are seldom accustomed. Through a study of how the RPM Network (Réseau Pôle Mémoire) was set up, we see the extent to which a discussion of cases promoted the learning of new methods of coordination in line with the specific characteristics of the organizations involved.

 
How to imagine future customers while developing an innovative product? The impact of marketing

Nathalie Darene and François Romon

Innovation, in particular the launching of new products, is now an essential condition for companies to survive and grow. Since launching a new product costs ever more, a firm needs to imagine its future customers and their needs — it might even need to create the customers in order to reduce risks so that a new product meets with success. How does marketing enter into this “construction” of an innovative product ? What methods does it use to form valid ideas about future customers ? How does it follow the iterations of the innovation process, from the emergence of a project to its implementation and the decision to launch a new product?

MOSAICS

Frédérique PALLEZ: Don’t tell my mother I’m on assignment: On Gilles Jeannot’s Les métiers flous: Travail et action publique (Toulouse : Éditions Octares 2005).

Jean-Marc WELLER: Justice in person: On Alexandre Mathieu-Fritz’s, Les huissiers de justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2005).

Alexandra BIDET: The manager and the shop: On Yves Cohen’s Organiser à l’aube du taylorisme. La pratique d’Ernest Mattern chez Peugeot, 1906-1919 (Besançon: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises 2001).

Michel VILLETTE: Leaving a mark: On Jean-Claude Thoenig and Charles Waldman’s De l’entreprise marchande à l’entreprise marquante (Paris: Éditions d’Organisation 2005)

TRIAL BY FACT

 
iDTGV: Is the SNCF on the rails to modernization?

Anne Dreyer, Aurélie Jammet and Romain Delmas

The French railway system (SNCF) launched a new concept for traveling by high-speed train (TGV) in late 2004: iDTGV might be its first concrete outcome of an innovation. Based on two major successes in the firm (the TGV and online ticket sales), iDTGV apparently stems from a determination to anticipate market trends by creating “something new”. However this modernization could not be undertaken as in a private company. The SNCF had to set up a subsidiary in order to obtain the necessary flexibility and freedom of action. Thus freed from the stranglehold of regulations, it could focus on users’ actual expectations while conducting tests with TGV carriages. A question has been left hanging that labor organizations asked at the start: does iDTGV threaten the public rail utility or undermine its underlying principles?

OVERLOOKED…

 
The market’s visible hands: Plans, purposes and regulations in the provision of home services to the elderly

Jean-Pierre Brechet, Nathalie Schieb-Bienfait and Caroline Urbain

À historical background is provided for analyzing the supply and demand of home services for the elderly. The formation of this supply and demand is interpreted as resulting from a mixture of regulations at the initiative of several parties with various purposes and plans: denominational organizations, nonprofits in the “social economy”, public organizations and (more recently and to a much lesser extent) for-profit companies. These parties’ plans lay the groundwork for the activities and regulations that shape competition. This leads us to inquire into the theoretical scope of taking these plans into account when we analyze collective actions and competitive phenomena.