Véronique Chanut

Value practices and public management

For Durkheim (1893) and for Weber (1905), values are key to understanding organisation and change, within society and individuals. This idea can be extended to management: no management without values (Barnard, 1938)! This is particularly true in the public environment, and the question of the importance of values for public management is more relevant and central than ever, between the traditional public service values and the idea of efficiency extolled by New Public Management (NPM). Over the past 30 years or so, NPM has become a dominant concept within the framework of the reform of public organisations (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). In a global context, where government deficits are coming under the political and media spotlight more than ever, NPM is propagating values related to the quest for performance, especially efficiency, within public organisations. While there are many variations on the theme of NPM and many attempts to this current, the authors agree that its dimensions are built around the concept of performance (Pollitt, 2003). Yet an increasing amount of criticism is being levelled against this model and its philosophy. These criticisms relate particularly to the loss of purpose of the action of public organisations in favour of purely economic and financial dimensions, with negative consequences for the quality of public service (Diefenbach, 2009) and working conditions in the public sector (Abord de Chatillon and Desmarais, 2012). The use of purely managerial approaches to solve essentially political problems is at the heart of the criticisms addressed at this movement and the managerial practices it has promoted (Bao et al., 2013). The resurgence of the concepts of general interest (Chevallier, 2008), bureaucratic ethos (Du Gay, 2000), or of public service motivation (Perry and Wise, 1990) are, conversely, a throwback

Les stratégies politiques des organisations - De nouvelles perspectives pour la recherche en sciences de gestion

Encadrement du lobbying, un defi democratique pour tous les pays europeens ». Tel etait le titre d’une conference organisee le 21 avril 2015 par l’ONG Transparency International France. De fait, les entreprises sont aujourd’hui en grande partie tournees vers leur environnement externe. Elles mettent en place des strategies dites « hors marche » (Baron, 1995), non pas centrees sur leur produit mais sur l’influence des parties prenantes externes. On y distingue les strategies politiques (lobbying notamment) destinees aux decideurs publics et les strategies societales (responsabilite sociale de l’entreprise, RSE) plus large. La RSE est aujourd’hui un objet de recherche relativement bien circonscrit, ce qui est moins le cas des strategies politiques, sujet de ce dossier.

Who drives an officer’s career, the individual or his institution? The case of French officers

The phenomenon of managerialisation, whose impact is being felt by the state, as well as its elites, helps bring about the emergence of the individual. The military is not immune to the organisational transformations that follow in its wake. By analysing the career path of French officers, this study explores the effects of this managerialisation. The research question as formulated sets out to determine whether it is the individual or his institution that drives the career of the French officer. The empirical study is based on very dense primary data collected from actors who play a key role in forming the French military elites: general officers, in some cases, directors of military schools, who have, in turn, been students, instructors and designers of this career path of the military leader. The results reveal that despite an unprecedented process of civilianisation within the military institution, the career of military leader is proving to be more immutable. The career path of the French officer can thus be read as a marker of military institutional identity. Points for practitioners As an institution, the military may seem to mirror the major evolutions of society, in particular, the phenomenon of managerialisation, which is making its impact felt on the state, along with its corollary, individualism. Analysing the career of French officers makes it possible to explore the effects of this managerialisation. The study results reveal a mitigation of the effects of this phenomenon, also called civilianisation in the case of the armed forces, and, on the contrary, reveal the invariant character of the career of military leader, pillar of the military institutional identity.

Les limites de la rationalité limitée ? Un essai de réflexion en sciences de gestion

Cette contribution porte sur la problematique de l’influence de la theorie de la rationalite limitee d’Herbert Simon en Sciences de Gestion. Dans une premiere etape, les auteurs proposent une identification des principaux courants de recherche fondes sur cette theorie dans les disciplines du comportement du consommateur en marketing, de la gestion des ressources humaines et des sciences de l’organisation. Ce travail fondamental permet de souligner trois limites dans cette appropriation ‘gestionnaire’ de la theorie : la vision sequentielle de la decision, la focalisation sur une route centrale de la decision au detriment des chemins peripheriques, le silence sur la rationalite axiologique ou normative et donc sur la question des valeurs. Par la suite, la question des paradigmes alternatifs est posee : les theories de l’a-rationalite (theorie de l’action, implications des recherches recentes en biologie en termes de comprehension de la decision) et ce que les auteurs qualifient de theorie de ‘l’hyper-rationalite’, a savoir les propositions recentes de Kahneman sur l’intuition sont brievement exposees. Cet inventaire debouche sur une comprehension augmentee du paradigme contemporain de notre discipline. Incidemment, les interets et les difficultes des reflexions pluridisciplinaires dans des plans si fondamentaux sont evoques.