D’utopismes en organisations

Abstract

En réaction aux multiples crises qui affectent les sociétés et les organisations contemporaines, de nombreux acteurs expérimentent des modes alternatifs de management, d’entrepreneuriat ou de leadership. Dans cet article, les auteurs avancent que ces démarches s’inscrivent dans la filiation des utopies sociales. Ils présentent une revue historique des dimensions organisationnelles de l’utopie, puis introduisent la notion post-structuraliste d’hétérotopies pour éclairer l’émergence de démarches localisées créatrices d’alternatives dans les contextes contemporains.

Performance of Administrative Reforms: Can the Organizational Development Approach Reconcile Utopia and Dystopia?

“…In recent years, research in the field of the management of change that interests us here has highlighted the complex and chaotic nature of change, which does not always develop according to predefined plans (Bootz, 2013;Collerette, 2008;Rondeau, 2008;Van de Ven and Poole, 1995). In terms of contributing to the construction of knowledge about administrative reform, the utopian spirit has a dual interest (Picard and Lanuza, 2016): 1) to see in committed projects a potential combination of pathological aspects by drawing on the imaginary root of utopia; 2) to invite us to rethink social life using imagination as a method of accessing a particular type of knowledge. In this article, we define administrative reform as a change deliberately introduced or emerging in a public institution with a view to improving its performance (Birkinshaw, Hamel and Mol, 2008;Brassard, 2003;Burnes, 2004;Mazouz and Gagnon (Dir.…”

“…Historically, the creation of the word utopia is attributed to the English author Thomas More in his book "The Island of Utopia" published in 1516 in Latin (Metzger, 2000;Picard and Lanuza, 2016). The book is structured in two didactically opposed parts.…”

“…To put it another way, and following a contextualist logic (Pichault, 2009), it is not the tool or method that determines the reform to be introduced, but rather the type of change that guides the choice of method and the tools to be adopted (cf., the examples of change models illustrated in Appendix A). If the change is of an incremental or radical type, or of any other type that cannot be envisaged from a utopian perspective (Burnes, 2004;Picard and Lanuza, 2016), approached under the PCEP for example, OD, as an intervention approach, could, through triangulation, be mobilized at certain stages of the process, always bearing in mind the need to shift from the paradigm of "change management" to that of "managing organizational capacity to change".…”