Thesis supervisors: Pascal Ughetto and Jean-Christophe Le Coze
This research will focus on the interactions of prevention officers working in high-risk companies. Our analysis of their activities will be conducted from an organizational perspective, examining the relationship between headquarters and industrial sites or construction sites. As key players in safety, they carry out their activities in contexts marked by an increase in norms, standards, and processes and, therefore, by an increasingly strong bureaucracy (in the sociological sense), particularly in facilities classified for environmental protection (ICPE). The aim here is to examine how, in this highly regulated and bureaucratic environment, they can develop, implement, and promote a prevention and anticipation policy that combines both regulated and managed safety. In an increasingly regulated work environment, prevention specialists are seeing a rise in bureaucracy that tends to create a gap between occupational safety and operational safety in their work (Rae et al., 2019), which for some professionals can contribute to a certain "blues" in their practice (Le Coze, 2024). The tendency of organizations to attempt to regulate in advance and formally the multiple requirements they set for themselves or that are imposed on them (ambitious economic objectives, regulatory constraints, vigilance in the face of risks that now extend to cybersecurity) encourages the production of standards that raise the question of how they relate to specific site situations. How can they be reconciled with site-specific contexts? How can we arbitrate between central standards and the constraints and challenges of sites as preventers? Our subject places us at the crossroads of several types of classic contributions from sociology and the social sciences more generally: the analysis of organizations, their dynamics, and in particular the relationships between actors; the analysis of activity; and the analysis of job dynamics and professional identities. We will situate our approach at this intersection, linking the investigation to an analysis of the activity of prevention professionals in a multidisciplinary field marked by safety science (Le Coze, 2019). The company chosen as the field of investigation is a high-risk industry. Appropriately for the subject of the thesis and our research question, it has implemented a reorganization with the aim, among other things, of decentralizing the activities of its prevention specialists from headquarters in order to bring them closer to the sites. This organizational change provides a particularly suitable context for understanding what is at stake in the profession of prevention specialist from the point of view of interactions between headquarters and sites. It also has the advantage of potentially revealing the transformations that will take place in terms of representations of their practice and the profession more generally, as well as the construction and application of rules. Having access to a structure in flux and following it through an ethnographic approach also means seeing how the creation of safety may evolve. This will be an opportunity to ask whether this decentralization has enabled a new type of structuring that allows for the creation of places for exchange and spaces for communication in order to pool the information to be reported to headquarters. We can ask whether prevention officers have taken advantage of this change to influence standards (Gherardi, 2019). We can observe whether other tools or spaces have been deployed to disseminate information in a uniform manner to sites with very different characteristics.
Keywords: Prevention specialist, Safety, Interaction, Activity, Sociology, Bureaucracy
The making of safety: safety professionals' interactions between headquarters and production sites
This research will focus on the interactions of safety professionals working in high-risk companies. Our analysis of their activities will be carried out from an organizational perspective, focusing on the organization of relations between headquarters and industrial sites or worksites. As key players in the field of safety, they carry out their activities in contexts marked by an increase in norms, standards, and processes and a growing bureaucracy (in a sociological sense), particularly in "installations classées pour la protection de l'environnement" (ICPE). In this highly regulated and bureaucratic environment, we will look at how they can build, deploy, and lead a prevention and anticipation policy that combines regulated and managed safety. In an increasingly regulated work environment, safety professionals see a rise in bureaucracy that tends to create a gap in their activity between "safety of work" and "operational safety" (Rae et al., 2019), which for some professionals can contribute to the reinforcement of a certain "blues" in their practice (Le Coze, 2024). The tendency for organizations to attempt to formally regulate, in advance, the multiple requirements they set themselves or which are imposed on them (ambitious economic objectives, regulatory constraints, vigilance in the face of risks now extending to include cybersecurity) encourages the production of standards, which raises the question of how they can be reconciled with site-specific situations. How can standards be reconciled with site-specific contexts? How can we arbitrate between central standards and site-specific constraints and issues? Our subject places us at the crossroads of several types of classic contributions from sociology, and social sciences more generally: analysis of organizations, their dynamics and in particular relations between professionals, analysis of activity, analysis of job dynamics and professional identities. We will situate our approach at this crossroads, linking the survey to an analysis of the activity of safety professionals in a multidisciplinary field marked by safety science (Le Coze, 2019). The company chosen as our field of investigation is a high-risk industry. It has implemented a reorganization with a main aim of decentralizing the activities of its head office safety professionals to bring them closer to the production sites. This organizational change is particularly well-suited to understanding the interactions between headquarters and sites in the safety profession. It also has the advantage of potentially revealing the transformations that will take place in terms of representations of their practice and the profession more generally, as well as the construction and application of rules. Having access to a structure in motion and following it through an ethnographic approach also means seeing how the manufacture of safety can be made to evolve. This will provide an opportunity to ask whether this decentralization has led to a new type of structuring, allowing for the creation of exchange point(s) and communication space(s), so as to pool the information to be passed on to head office. We might ask whether prevention specialists have taken advantage of this change to influence standards (Gherardi, 2019). We can also observe whether other tools or space(s) have been deployed to disseminate information in a uniform way to sites with very different characteristics.
Keywords: Safety professionals, Safety, Interaction, Activity, Sociology, Bureaucracy
Year of enrollment: 2024
Doctoral school: Organizations, Markets, Institutions (OMI)