Project DEVENT (ANR/ DFG 2014-2016)

Professional Development and the Power to Act of Employees: France and Germany through the Prism of the Multinational

Coordinators : Jürgen Kaedtler (SOFI, Göttingen) and Bénédicte Zimmermann (Centre Georg Simmel, EHESS).

Against the background of the globalization of the economy, the increasing demand for flexibility from both companies and their employees, as well as a diversification of individual aspirations in relation to their work, this project aims to deepen our understanding of the interaction between company policies and the power to act of employees within the trajectory of their professional becoming in France and Germany. We will analyze the role of work and staff policies in the functioning of companies and the manner in which they relate to external structural factors of an institutional, yet equally economic and social, nature. From a conceptual point of view, we harness the notion of competency such as it was defined by Amartya Sen, essentially concerned with freedom of choice, the power to act and collective responsibility.

This empirical qualitative investigation will enquire into employees’ power to act in relation to three common topics of debate in France and Germany, and on the basis of different modes of interrogation.

1) The thematic of professional development, with regards to company policies and the opportunities for career and skills development which companies offer to their employees. 2) The thematic of the quality of work, viewed from the perspective both of the initiatives of companies and the expectations of employees. 3) The thematic of the balance between professional and private life, in relation to the distribution of work time, higher work intensity and the concomitant psycho-social risks. This project aims to be both comparative and cross-cutting, insofar it approaches the French and German fields through the prism of multinationals established in both countries. It thereby aims to contribute to a hybridized approach to work in France and Germany. The ambition is to demonstrate the way in which employees and companies in both countries respond to shared problems and challenges, whether in contrasting or parallel fashion, by taking account of the historical structuring of institutions and the categories which frame their action. From a methodological point of view, this approach brings together three different perspectives: the institutional perspective, that of institutions with the power to structure work; the organizational perspective, through the production of business monographs; and the individual perspective through the conducting of biographical interviews. These perspectives likewise combine different scales:  local, regional, national and transnational.

Source de l’image sur la page d’accueil : Wikipedia. Attribution : Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F007448-0004 / Müller, Simon / CC-BY-SA