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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.vxeg7d

>

Where these data come from
High-risk industry’s management system, its evolutions and its effects : the case of the outsourced maintenance of EDF’s Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

Realized within a CIFRE agreement, this thesis studies the evolutions of the intra and inter-organizational management systems of a high-risk industry, as well as their effects on the local level – mainly on work relationships and situations occurring during outsourced maintenance operations. Drawing on research on high-risk industry, subcontracting and social regulation theory, these analyzes articulate the macro (the company in its context), meso (the company’s Production Division and its management systems) and micro (production sites, work relationships and situations) levels.Based on the use of a “grounded” and “opportunistic” methodology, this research mobilizes large amount of data from interviews, observations, and internal documents.The socio-economic context, neo-liberalism (embodied here in the New Public Management and the choice of subcontracting), the privatization of the company and its deteriorated financial situation, as well as the supervision of an independent agency, weigh on the choices of the Production Division. They contribute to the evolution of the Production Division’s management system. Increased centralization, standardization, externalization, contracting, competition, controls based on multiple indicators, as well as a significant generational renewal, are the main features of this organization focused on industrial safety and cost saving.At the local level, the choices made by the Production Division, reflected in the evolution of its management systems, produce various effects, such as the erosion of the technical skills of the company’s employees, as well as interprofessional partitioning that can hinder the effective coordination of outsourced activities. Strong cooperation with subcontractors is also made more difficult by the risk of reclassification of the commercial contract into an employment contract – which limits relations between contractor’s employees and subcontractors’ operators – as well as by the bureaucratic complexity that slow down the information flow. These difficulties are intensifying as the time and cost pressures experienced by subcontracting companies and contracting company’s employees increase, and as financial penalties – going along with subcontractor’s errors – are more regularly applied, weakening inter-organizational trust.The relationships that sites maintain with subcontractors, which vary from one site to another but are increasingly dependent on national guidelines, affect the behaviors of subcontractors and the way they carry out their work. Subcontractors’ operators, who encounter numerous hazards, can hardly contribute to adapting the design of the (complex and strictly programmed) activities they carry out, despite the existence of an Operating Experience Feedback. They tend to develop withdrawal behaviors that are mitigated by professionalism and a strong safety culture shared by all, allowing them to cope with hazards.Horizontal and vertical disconnections, coupled with increased time and financial pressure, form a system of constraints producing effects on work situations and relationships. The strategic apex, which promotes partnerships and simplification, tries to curb these consequences without being able to give up the institutional logics that structure the organization.Improving and supplementing co-regulation devices could be one of the ways helping to foster the conciliation of contradictory demands of economic performance, strict compliance with safety procedures and the autonomy of work collective.

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