Employability and Industrial Mutations

Florent Noel is a Professor at IAE Paris – Sorbonne Business School, France, where he is responsible for the HR and CSR master’s degree and the M.A.I. (Mutations, Anticipation and Innovation) chair. His research focuses on employment management in companies and, more broadly, on restructuring practices. Geraldine Schmidt is a Professor at IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School, France, and a member of the M.A.I. chair. Her research focuses on restructuring practices in companies and SSE organizations, and the relationship between art and management.

Foreword by Patrick Gilbert xiii
Patrick GILBERT

Foreword by IPSI xv
Xavier LE COQ, Jacques LAUVERGNE and Emmanuelle CHAPELIER

Introduction xix
Florent NOËL

Part 1 Towards a General Theory of Employability 1

Introduction to Part 1 3
Bernard GAZIER

Chapter 1. Employability and Public Policy: A Century-long Learning Process and Unfinished Process 7
Bernard GAZIER

1.1. One hundred years of trial and error between the individual and the collective: seven operational definitions of employability 8

1.1.1. Seven versions in three waves during the 20th century 8

1.1.2. From static to dynamic and from unilateral to interactive 12

1.2. Current tensions and recompositions 13

1.2.1. “Profiling”, from contextual calibration to negotiated interaction 13

1.2.2. Employability between individual capacity and collective construction 14

1.3. Conclusion 16

1.4. References 17

Chapter 2. Employability as a Managerial Imperative? 19
Florent NOËL and Géraldine SCHMIDT

2.1. Employability and change: the migration of a concept 20

2.1.1. Employability, a matter of public policy 21

2.1.2. Employability as an employer’s responsibility in managing restructuring 21

2.1.3. Employability as an individual responsibility 21

2.1.4. Employability for the development of organizations and individuals? 22

2.2. Employability management practices 25

2.2.1. Assessing employability 25

2.2.2. Developing employability 27

2.3. Conclusion 29

2.4. References 31

Chapter 3. Capability-based Employability: A Total Organizational Fact 33
Bénédicte ZIMMERMANN

3.1. Employability: being able and enabled to 35

3.1.1. Qualification, skills and competence: what it means to be capable 36

3.1.2. Being able to: a condition for the exercise of responsibility 37

3.2. Skill-based employability, capability-based employability 39

3.2.1. Employability based on skill maintenance 39

3.2.2. Employability based on skill development 39

3.2.3. Employability based on capability 40

3.3. A total organizational fact 40

3.4. The five traits of the capability-enhancing organization 42

3.5. Conclusion 44

3.6. References 45

Part 2. Employability and Individual Trajectories 47

Introduction to Part 2 49
Pauline dE BECDELIÈVRE

Chapter 4. The “Unemployable”: Different Figures, Between Societal Construction and Unconscious Meanings 53
Raymonde FERRANDI

4.1. People who are not allowed to work 54

4.1.1. Migrants 54

4.1.2. Persons reaching the age limit 54

4.1.3. People who are still off work or declared unfit by the occupational physician 55

4.2. Discriminated audiences 55

4.2.1. Situations of discrimination in the texts 56

4.2.2. Situations on the ground often ignored or denied 56

4.3. Audiences for cognitive remediation 58

4.3.1. From the children of the Shoah to the young people of the “neighborhoods” 58

4.3.2. Interest and limits of the analysis in terms of “deprivation” 59

4.4. People who “suffer” in social work through their work 60

4.4.1. The unconscious and the law of repetition – the transference 60

4.4.2. Transfer to the social scene and work 61

4.4.3. The “opportunities” offered by the context 62

4.4.4. A perpetual misunderstanding 62

4.5. The generation of refusal 63

4.5.1. A self-definition that no longer necessarily involves work 63

4.5.2. The refusal of suffering at work 64

4.6. Conclusion – discussion 65

4.6.1. Audiences, people and problems? 65

4.6.2. Personal characteristics and contextual factors 65

4.6.3. Evolution over time 66

4.6.4. Taking invisible tools seriously 66

4.7. References 67

Chapter 5. Staying in the Game: Employability and Mobile Careers in the IT Industry 69
Pauline DE BECDELIÈVRE, Jean-Yves OTTMANN and Cindy FELIO

5.1. Independence as the pinnacle of a boundaryless career orientation 73

5.1.1. The choice of independence 73

5.1.2. Career opportunities 74

5.2. Maintaining employability as a condition of independence 75

5.2.1. Employability development 75

5.2.2. Choice of mission and employability 76

5.3. Boundaryless career success and employability 77

5.3.1. A “cognitive compass”? 77

5.3.2. What are the factual orientations of their careers? 78

5.4. Conclusion 80

5.4.1. Contributions and research avenues 80

5.4.2. Openings and societal issues 82

5.5. References 83

Chapter 6. Employability in the Era of Digitization of Jobs 85
Martina GIANECCHINI, Paolo GUBITTA and Sara DOTTO

6.1. Introduction 85

6.2. Skills for the contemporary labor market 86

6.2.1. The T-shaped professionals 86

6.2.2. Employablity in the changing labor market 87

6.2.3. Technological change and work design 88

6.3. Research methods 90

6.3.1. Research setting and sample 90

6.3.2. Variables 91

6.3.3. Data analysis 92

6.4. Findings 92

6.5. Discussions and directions for future research 94

6.6. References 96

Part 3. Career Stages, HRM and Employability 101

Introduction to Part 3 103
Benoît GRASSER

Chapter 7. The MRS, a Device in Favor of Employability and Social Performance 107
Anne-Laure GATIGNON-TURNAU and Séverine VENTOLINI

7.1. The MRS as a partnership practice 108

7.1.1. The MRS from the point of view of Pôle emploi: placing the long-term unemployed 108

7.1.2. The MRS from an organizational perspective: mass recruitment for jobs under pressure 109

7.1.3. The MRS from the candidate’s perspective: getting back into the labor market 110

7.2. MRS and employability 111

7.2.1. Employability as a type of psychological contract 111

7.2.2. The MRS as a mechanism for the new psychological contract 112

7.2.3. The effects of MRS recruitment on employee loyalty 113

7.3. Survey and main findings on MRS recruitment 115

7.3.1. Survey protocol 115

7.3.2. Socio-demographic characteristics of recruited candidates 116

7.3.3. The results of the survey: the conditions for the MRS to be a positive HR lever 117

7.4. Discussion and conclusion of the results 118

7.4.1. Benefits of the MRS in terms of commitment 118

7.4.2. Recruitment and employer brand 120

7.5. References 120

Chapter 8. Recruiting in Innovative Activities: From the Impossible Search for a Match to the Construction of Employability 123
Thierry COLIN, Benoît GRASSER and Fabien MEIER

8.1. Recruiting for an innovative activity in a context of rapid growth in production 124

8.1.1. Initial situation and issues 124

8.1.2. The external dimension of the system: broadening and qualifying the recruitment base 125

8.1.3. The internal dimension of the system: design of a formalized tutoring approach 126

8.2. The effects and actual functioning of these devices 127

8.2.1. The central role of teaching tools 128

8.2.2. A multiplication of singular tutor–learner relationships 129

8.2.3. Impact of the system on the rules of collective action 130

8.3. Lessons learned in terms of employability 131

8.3.1. Employability, a convention to be imagined, negotiated and implemented 132

8.3.2. Employability, an approach that goes beyond the search for a match between needs and resources 132

8.3.3. Employability, a construction around a double frontier: internal/external and training/production 133

8.4. Conclusion 135

8.5. References 136

Chapter 9. Reclassification and Employability: A Reading in Terms of Boundary Objects 137
Ève SAINT-GERMES

9.1. Social support for company liquidations: a collective actor for the employability of those made redundant 138

9.2. Studying the boundary objects of the reclassification of victims of collective dismissals 140

9.3. Study of an emblematic case, the reclassification cell of the Air Littoral liquidation PSE 141

9.4. The boundary objects of the reclassification of victims of the Air Littoral PSE 143

9.4.1. The boundary between the reclassification cell and the monitoring committee: negotiating the means, standards and results of reclassification 143

9.4.2. The reclassification cell – individual boundary: managing categories and assessing situations 145

9.5. Discussion: the infrastructure of individual and collective employability in reclassification 146

9.5.1. The infrastructure for translating individual employability: profiling a psychological state and a personal situation 146

9.5.2. The negotiated infrastructure of collective employability: contested categories that make the unsupported invisible 146

9.6. Conclusion 147

9.7. References 148

Chapter 10. Being Employable, a Matter of Context 151
Sara DOTTO, Patrick GILBERT, Florent NOËL and Nathalie RAULET-CROSET

10.1. Employability, an imperative between universalism and contingency 152

10.1.1. The employable individual: an exceptional being? 152

10.1.2. Being employable: a matter of context 153

10.1.3. A conventionalist interpretation of employability 153

10.2. Results 157

10.2.1. Fabdièse: employability in the industrial world 157

10.2.2. Servinfo: employability in the commercial world 159

10.2.3. Aidiance: employability in the interpersonal world 161

10.3. Conclusion 162

10.4. References 164

Part 4. Employability and Work Situations 167

Introduction to Part 4 169
Nathalie RAULET-CROSET

Chapter 11. What are the Possible Futures in the Factories of the Future? The Case of Operators in an Aeronautics Company 173
Emmanuelle GARBE and Jérémy VIGNAL

11.1. Review of the literature 174

11.1.1. Factories of the future: characteristics and challenges of ongoing digital transformations 174

11.1.2. Digital transformation of industry and skills: the case of operators 176

11.2. Methodology 178

11.3. Results 179

11.3.1. Between skills upgrading and deskilling: a polarization that can be observed within the operator population itself 179

11.3.2. Between skills upgrading and deskilling: is there a “third way” in the factories of the future? 181

11.3.3. Faced with digital transformation: what HR support for operators? 182

11.4. Conclusion 183

11.5. References 183

Chapter 12. Digital Technologies as a Lever for Developing the Employability of Middle Managers 187
Anne-Laure DELAUNAY

12.1. The employability of middle managers 188

12.2. Digital technology and employability of middle managers 189

12.3. Research context 192

12.4. Data collection and analysis 193

12.5. Main results 194

12.5.1. Result 1: an opportunity to tinker 194

12.5.2. Result 2: an opportunity to develop technical and managerial expertise 195

12.5.3. Result 3: digital technology as a barrier to employability? 196

12.6. Discussion 197

12.6.1. Digital technologies and managerial leeway 197

12.6.2. Towards an enabling environment: digital and DIY 197

12.7. Conclusion 198

12.8. References 198

Chapter 13. Work as a Factor of Integration and Employability: The Case of Trisociété 203
Emmanuelle BEGON and Michel PARLIER

13.1. From employability controversies to the study problem 204

13.2 Professional integration and production requirements: the case of Trisociété 206

13.2.1. Presentation of the case 206

13.2.2. Remarkable elements of the Trisociété experience 208

13.3. Discussion: from employability to “employerability” 210

13.3.1. Axis 1: production requirements and quality of working conditions 210

13.3.2. Axis 2: organizational and managerial support 211

13.3.3. Axis 3: speaking work 212

13.3.4. Axis 4: professional support for career paths 213

13.3.5. Axis 5: business agility 214

13.4. Conclusion 215

13.5. References 215

Conclusion 217
Géraldine SCHMIDT

List of Authors 221

Index 223