From organizational silence to structured debate about work : effects on the safety and on the organization.

Abstract

This thesis concerns the safety of work organizations. Its purpose is the development of a safety culture, with the postulate that safety must be done with the participation of workers of all levels of the organization. A research based on this principle was conducted in two companies of energy distribution in France. Like many others, these companies are focused on a managerial safety culture where over-proceduralization, control of "bad behavior" and sanctions prevail over the real work. As a consequence, we notice the development of the "organizational silence", workers being led not to report difficulties or contradictions experienced on the field, or to report low-impact situations. Experience feedback is thus weakened or ineffective. To manage this organizational silence and its consequences, this research experimented work debate spaces between workers belonging to different levels of the company. When certain conditions are met, these spaces may have many benefits for the concerned persons and for the local organization. In order to be sustainable, it is necessary that its members have some power to act to manage some of the situations discussed locally, and that they can communicate with other spaces when local resources are insufficient. Thus, work debate spaces should not be isolated in hierarchical levels, but must be interconnected to define the power to act and autonomy of each. This highlights the principle of subsidiarity, which teaches us that each situation should be managed at the lowest appropriate level of the organization. This thesis argues that to manage organizational silence and develop a safety culture, it is necessary to develop a "structured work debate" - or debate spaces organized according to the principle of subsidiarity - in different levels of the company. What are the effective contributions of structured work debate? And its conditions of implementation? These are questions that this thesis attempts to answer by the construction of debate devices within the organization and the detailed analysis of the content of the discussions. The results question the classic view of safety based on analyzes focused only on past situations of conflict, to highlight the link between past experience, the current debate and the likely future situations. The approach implemented during these three years led to develop a more resilient organization, i.e. an organization able of maintaining a stable functioning despite the disturbances inherent to any system of work. This research invites us to rethink the way of managing current organizations. Although the starting point of the research concerned safety issues, the development of a structured work debate allowed at the same time to deal with issues of workers' health, quality of work and performance of the system.