To summarize all that precedes, we can say that the definition of autonomy as a general working capacity opens on a representation of individuals at work that is based on the central part played by cognitive processes, whether these concern resolving the problems that punctuate the working process or producing new capacities, which result from the representations generated by an effect of experience.
ln this respect, autonomy introduces a radical incertitude regarding the conditions of collective action. Whereas in the past, during the Fordism era, collective action was predefined by the planning of indi-viduals functions, work positions and performances within the organisa-tions, at present (especially where an increasingly knowledge-intensive productive logic prevails) collective action is increasingly subject to individuals' (or subjectivities') prior integration among themselves, directly through the activities for which the initiative is theirs.
Thus, the unity and efficiency of collective action are not a given fact, nor can they be established in advance. Constructed within the work process itself, collective action closely depends on the speed and quality of the convergence process regarding the representations of the workers who are part of the work process. Under these circumstances, collective action is an integral part of a dynamic, interactive game of confrontation taking place in real time among individuals, so as to create common or shared practices or representations. This confrontation results in a set of discursive and linguistic practices, which do not act as a substitute for the activities resulting from the workers' initiative but — on the contrary — forms a body with them.
Hence, from the firm's viewpoint, the economic risk is that this con-frontation could lead to a dead end or, at least, prove to be unproductive if the workers' autonomy of action becomes an obstacle through the development of activities or capacities that are far removed from its strategy and/or efficiency criteria dictated by the markets. Because of this, the supervision of autonomy appears to be an essential condition for the development of firms' performance. Specific rules, language and procedures are necessary if a minimal orderliness in the resources and cognitive capacities available within each firm is to prevail.
ln order to clarify this point, the last section of this paper offers a few reflections on the management policies adopted by companies' directors and managers in order to take workers' autonomy in hand. Our attention will focus on two of these policies' dimensions: the management of conception times and the assessment and piloting of work groups by means of the "skills approach".
Labour and Employment in a Globalising World
A/ Cognitive Rationalisation and Management Methods of Conception Times
In complex work situations, where mobilized knowledge is for a greater part contingent, it is possible to break down the process of knowledge production into three moments, or three phases of action: a moment of analysis of undertaking, a moment of implementation or contextualisation, a moment of reflectivity or formalisation.
From the firm's viewpoint, these different phases are part of a tem-porality and dynamics concerning the development of each individual worker's specific capacities that escape direct control, especially through official channels. Under these circumstances, there arises a practical (and policy-related) problem of how to direct the actions conceived and implemented both in the short term regarding the work goals imposed by the company's management and in the medium-long term regarding the firms' strategic positioning, especially in terms of portfolio choice (technologies, products, activities). Firms' difficulty lies, precisely, in bringing under control the material and immaterial resources at their disposal and, over and above this, the flow of informa-tion through which the workers think out, elaborate and decide on how to act.
Since the early 1980s, the answer provided by firms' directors in terms of process management progressively imposed itself as an original solution to the problem of controlling individuals' autonomy while in the process of working. Basically, process management relies on mechanisms that normalize behaviours expressed during the entire chain of the workers' cognitive activities. These mechanisms are not aimed at imposing opinions or ways of seeing or doing things, but to suggest or help understand the problems that arise while simultaneously giving actors the liberty of action regarding the necessary adjustments. Three examples of these management mechanisms, chosen among the most significant ones, will be used to illustrate the above: quality mecha-nisms; the role of facilitator passed on to first-level supervisors; and, vocational training.
The increase in the number of quality mechanisms (ISO norm, pro-ductive maintenance, total quality) introduced by firms addresses the concern regarding the implementation of tools to formalize the knowl-edge acquired through experience (indicators, procedures), whether this concerns bolstering the continuity of processes' efficiency assessment, or revealing dysfunctions, improvements that have been introduced or successes that have been achieved (Campinos Dubernet, 2003: 187). In this way, these mechanisms ensure the continuity of data required for the observation and understanding of the phenomena encountered (op. cit.). In this respect, they permit a better coordination of activities
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within the firms by offering everyone the means of a greater (historical and contextual) visibility of the problems and the possible or available solutions. They also allow, to quote H. Simon, to save on "attention resources" (Simon) by avoiding repeated investments of the same kind in the construction of already tested learning processes. In sum, the quality mechanisms can generate gains in terms of efficiency by liberat-ing individuals from routine tasks (Veltz, 1999: 21) and thus, at the same time, free time and means for researching or creating activities or problems of a higher level of complexity.
We should note, however, that the virtuous effects of quality tools are not systematic. Though these tools are predominant in activities that are knowledge intensive (such as in activities of industrial design or service relations, where the cognitive dimension of the underlying work is important), they are in no way inescapable. Through the formalisation of different categories of knowledge, in particular of written procedures, there is a risk that supervisors and management directors turn these tools against their users. As J.P. Durand notes, the item "I write what I do"
then becomes "I do that which is written thanks to the magic of social relations within the firm" (Durand, 2004: 68). From being a prop for the real-life situation's cognitive activity, the tool becomes the instrument of a forced cooperation where a direct technico-economic pressure is exercised on potential individual reluctances (op. cit.). Everything hinges on the management's desire to promote change in the prevailing coordi-nation methods. As attested by certain case studies, it is not infrequent that, under the effect of implementing quality mechanisms, individuals gain in terms of work autonomy in the context of a collective job what they lose in autonomy-margin for manoeuvre inherited from (neo-) taylorist situations (Campinos Dubernet, 2003; Bercot, 1999).
In order to guarantee the unity and coherence of collective action over time, the mediation role played on the jobsite by supervisors con-stitutes a second means of "channelling" individuals' subjectivity into their professional practices. Indeed, it is important that firms' manage-ment have the means of following, step by step, from the inside, the process of knowledge production, namely by supervising the conditions under which it take place, by taking advantage too of the new knowl-edge that might emerge and, lastly, by favouring the sharing, combining, dissemination and integration of individual pieces of knowledge. These requirements sit ill with a conception of supervision in the likes of a
"methods engineer", whole Organisation activity consists of separating the work from the worker, of defining and stipulating the tasks' content, of developing and managing a whole apparatus for controlling and executing the operations characterizing these tasks. A contrario they legitimise a profound renewal of the modes and aims of first level supervision within organisations, those of managing, consolidating,
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even deepening, the learning processes or the organisational routines within the work groups (Delteil and Dieuaide, 2001; Dieuaide, 2005). In particular, from the viewpoint of collective action, it is essential to obtain the full and wholehearted participation of the organisation's members towards achieving the production goals. It is up to the "man-agers" to build, an the field, such a relationship of trust within the work groups. This relation of trust is vital in order to ensure the convergence of representations and allow a free circulation between tacit and codified or explicit knowledge. For the firms' management, these modes of transferring knowledge, which can take various forms (Nonaka, 1994), correspond to as many issues at stake and questions that need to be resolved. Through their duties as "facilitators", the supervisory staff thus needs to reconcile two requirements: perpetuate the learning processes so as to extract the tacit knowledge and incorporate it into the products and technologies; and, improve the existing operating diagrams, encour-age the exploration of new ideas and new combinations liable of gener-ating incremental changes at all levels of activity (logic of Kaizen).
Lastly, when it circulates (at least partially) within the jobsite, voca-tional training constitutes a third possibility for supervising individuals' autonomy by favouring the apparition of learning processes and specific know-how according to a horizontal, non-hierarchical and inter-sectional mode (Charlon, 1996). In order to clarify this point, we should note with M. Feutrie and E. Verdier that "real-life situation" vocational training is at odds with a certain managerial and insurance-related vision of training, which is dispensed in turn so as to update or develop spe-cific know-how (Feutrie and Verdier, 1993: 482). With real-life situa-tion vocasitua-tional training, the link is no longer solely educasitua-tional; it is also functional (op. cit.). As B. Courtois et al. remark, "the aims of training during work activity merges with the production aim during the training processes" (Courtois et al., 1996: 180). All things being equal moreover, there results a controlled development of the employees'
"professionality" via a direct involvement of knowledge resulting from experiences that are mobilized or produced in work situations character-ized by instability or by change. When directed towards the production of useful and efficient knowledge, vocational training becomes a central link in developing a participative approach in the employees as regards the improvement of organisational flexibility and, beyond, of firms' economic performance. But this tool is not really effective unless the employees are actively involved, which supposed that a number of obstacles be removed. On the one hand, and as remarked by E. Charlon,
"the capacity to formalize what one knows is not a form of knowledge mastered by every employee" (Charlon, 1996: 151). On the other, the involvement expected of employees in the context of vocational training strongly risks being experienced as an imposition, particularly when
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there exists no previous form of collective work (cooperation, collabora-tion) on whose basis the employees can create for themselves a clear idea of the content and the limits of their professional experiences (see, for example, S. Caroly and Y. Clot, 2004 on the comparison of how two post offices functioned). Finally, in the context of asserting a "knowl-edge-based economy", where knowledge is increasingly diversified and is linked to an ever-growing number of internal and external partners of the firm, there exists a non-negligible risk that, in the hands of the management, vocational training can become the instrument of a policy of personnel segmentation, a source of a lack of job security for the least qualified among them.
In all, and subject to the limits mentioned above, these different forms of supervision can be considered as being as many means of controlling individuals' liberty of action, whether they concern quality-tools at the level of the construction of representations, direct supervi-sion of subjectivities and mutual trust at the core of work groups' action, or of vocational training at the level of the formalisation of knowledge stemming from experience and its transformation into general working capacities. From the management' s viewpoint, there results all in one go a permanent endogenous assimilation of skills and know-how in the form of routines, norms, procedures and a cognitive rationalisation that can manifest itself in two ways: either through a standardisation of work processes as long as these are sufficiently explicit and/or stabilized, or through an acknowledgement of practices and action modes of the workers themselves (skills method, see below). In any case, it would seem that these different forms of supervision converge so as to try to ensure, in accordance with the goals pursued, that the time needed to produce and mobilize knowledge during the act of working decreases.
B/ Assessment and Piloting of Work Groups:
the Stakes of the "Skills Approach"
If collective action poses a problem as regards its management, this is not only because of the autonomy of action of its members; it is also due to collective action itself, as its dynamics can be neither spontane-ously nor totally assimilated to firms' key activities or their develop-ment strategy.
This gap is structural. lt stems both from the pressure of "external"
factors (technological, scientific, commercial, financial) that, regularly, force firms' management to revise their strategic choices, but also from the difficulties encountered by the work groups to incorporate these choices at the daily level of the objectives and means of action that are mobil ized.
Labour and Employment in a Globalising World
It is, partially, the Human Resources Department's responsibility to seek ways of reducing this gap, namely by introducing management systems that acknowledge that work groups have a coherence and dynamics which are specific to them. In this respect, the "skills method"
constitutes an original approach.
lndeed, the "skills method" is not univocal. According to M. Campinos Dubernet (2005), it consists in defining the "occupation (profession) referentials" either starting from the individuals in real-life situations and the posts they occupy, or from the global strategy and the collective skills required to implement it.
In the first case, the "skills method" is of a more functional nature.
Using the case of a large company of the high-tech sector, C. Paraponaris shows that this method is based on a battery of manage-ment tools, such as pre-recruitmanage-ment training courses (internships), the qualitative assessment of project managers, the quarterly appraisal interviews carried out by superiors, the annual appraisal interview carried out jointly (Human Resources Department, direct collaborators, project manager) and by means of a self-assessment on behalf of the interested parties (made on the basis of a comparison between the goals the latter undertook to achieve and the results they obtained). Among these tools, the annual assessment is the most important one. lt gives rise to an overall grading and leads to a differentiated payment in the form of a bonus. This interview is completed by a promotion policy based on each worker's report on his/her professional activities as well as his/her vision of his/her own personal positioning within the firm's knowledge network (Paraponaris, 1005, summarized by us).
In the second case, the "skills method" initiated by the firm's man-agement falls under the province of a medium-term projection of the skills the company seeks to possess for the professions exercised within it, while taking into account the developments in its environment (regu-latory, technological, scientific). But a number of these skills cannot be hired "ready for use" at the exit of schools or colleges. These need to be produced locally, something that in a first stage requires a meticulous diagnosis of the skills that exist collectively at the level of the chains of the strategic activities. The assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in this field lead to a certain number of measures, from a change in the organisation of work in these different chains (and hence a simple readjustment of individual skills), to projects of in-house training or the implementation of knowledge capitalisation methods, to the construc-tion of specific itineraries within firms in order to favour learning processes of the learning by doing type. In any case, the approach that is adopted is a collective one. lt is only during a second phase that the
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"skills method" is applied at an individual level (Campinos-Dubernet, op. cit.).
The two approaches do not necessarily coexist, not because they obey to incompatible logics but, rather, due to the fact their implementa-tion calls for a profound change in the regulaimplementa-tion of social work rela-tions within the firms. On the one hand, as A. Dietrich (2003: 228-229) notes, to recognize and remunerate individuals' skills supposes that the fields of action and responsibility are well delimited. On the other, the emergence and structuring of skills at the collective level supposes that conditions for learning and acknowledging new forms of professional-ism have been put into place.
There exists, therefore, a subtle balance that needs to be found be-tween an individualisation of the wage relation and its collective coun-terpart in terms of mobility and professional Integration. This balance is not a given fact a priori. It supposes the establishment of new work and remuneration rules that explicitly recognize the existence of an enlarged space of activities, both on the level of the involvement and the forms of undertaking work and on that of capitalizing their practical experience within the work groups in the form of expertise or know-how.
Conclusion
The development of autonomy as a general working capacity gives expression to a profound transformation in the forms of the organisation and management of companies' economic performance. The interesting factor of this concept resides in the fact it highlights a non-Taylorism path towards the rationalisation of tasks and, incidentally, the construc-tion of a collective acconstruc-tion. Established on reflectivity, this path under-lines the importance of cognitive logic in clarifying and ordering the actions of conception. Initiated by the individuals themselves under the
"remote" control of firms' management and supervisors, these forms of logic are part of open, a priori non-prescribed intersubjective relations.
Through their intermediary, collective action is no longer an ex post concretisation of a set of a priori defined and organized representations and tasks. On the contrary, collective action emerges progressively and directly from the individuals' capacity, means and commitment to organizing themselves, producing and sharing their specific resources. It should be noted that the construction of a collective action, on the interface of working relations between the organisation's various mem-bers, is a specific social feature that one can suppose is not exclusive to knowledge-intensive activities. lt should be possible to encounter this dimension in all activities, especially in the field of services where person/person relations are dominant compared to person/machine relations in defining and conducting their actions.
Labour and Employment in a Globalising World
References
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