À partir du cas des universitaires qui s’estiment de plus en plus débordés par les tâches d’intendance et de gestion de l’université, cet article s’interroge sur la problématique de professions confrontées aux exigences grandissantes de la forme organisationnelle : la gestion et le pilotage de l’organisation prennent de plus en plus de temps sur la pratique de la profession, mais le fait de s’en occuper est un gage d’autonomie pour des professionnels qui, à défaut, seraient menacés de devenir des « travailleurs du savoir » au sein d’organisations gérées par des administratifs « purs ». Réalisée à partir de vingt entretiens avec des universitaires en charge de tâches administratives, cette étude montre que s’exprime, en filigrane, la conscience que ces tâches peu légitimes sont aussi source de pouvoir ; elle explore trois pistes permettant à la légitimité des trajectoires de carrière d’évoluer, ce qui rendrait possible un investissement assumé dans les tâches, stratégiques, de gestion de l’organisation.
At a time when the reforms inspired by New Public Management are prompting a hybridization of values, there is growing reference to the notion of values in managerial discourses within public organizations. While some studies consider the statement of values as a direct lever of change, others show that they are more of an obstacle. The studies that make use of institutional logics or economies of worth suggest a dynamic of change involving values, without exploring it as such. Focusing on the context of public professional organizations, this article explores the link between values and change by focusing on the process of adoption of new practices in response to a reform. Our qualitative research among academics during the implementation of the reform of doctoral training in France confirms that professional autonomy is often against reform, but also reveals that ‘professional values’ do not form a coherent and fixed whole: they are plural and generate a series of tensions that are, in turn, reflected by practices. The reform has the effect of inflaming controversies, leading to a possible change brought about by the professionals themselves. Points for practitioners This article challenges the view of professional values as a mechanical source of immobilization, and the interest of a purely discursive use of the values to support change. Professional values appear more as an endogenous source of change than as leverage available to management in times of a reform.
International audienceProfessionalisation, defined as the transmission of competences adapted to the job-market, is one of the new missions of Doctoral Schools in France. Interviews with supervisors reveal a number of ambivalent attitudes towards this new policy. Supervisors do support the rhetoric of professionalisation, but are powerless to push their students towards other careers than the academic one. We interpret this as a challenge to the academic identity through the modification of what a Ph.D is, which, in turn, impacts on the content, output and meaning of supervision. We show that academics do professionalise their students, but only for the profession they know: academia. They only train the students whom they believe they can acknowledge as future peers, and the on-the-job training provided by Ph.D supervisors is implicitly directed towards academia. The absence of an explicit academic professional identity is discussed, as well as the fact that 'professionalising' must relate to a specific professional identity. We argue that only 'specific' professional identity can be transmitted, leading to questions about the implementation of the related policy
Organizational identity provides an increasingly large number of researchers with a theoretical lens for examining current transformations of the university. The primary objective of this article is to propose an extensive, systematic overview of the literature published on the subject between 1972 and 2014. The analysis of 120 empirical studies reveals a literature which is rich but dispersed, in theoretical, epistemological and methodological terms alike; thriving since the 2000s, it is mainly US but increasingly globalised. After identifying six main research categories according to the classical distinctions found in the organizational identity literature, we propose a series of avenues for discussion bearing on the status of identity as an indicator of changes at work in the university, their level and depth, the linkage between the concepts of market and institutional field and finally, the epistemological implications of the international nature of this literature.
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