Abstract EN:

What happens when a public administration carries a model of decentralised management and delegates some decisions to the production units? the negociation and the individual relations between the persons in charge and their subordinates increase; the interpretation of the rules is continually solicited ; the partners lack the institutional supports. My thesis deals with the difficulties of middle management to play the role of the "mediator" between the organisation and his subordinates, and analyses how the partners of the hierarchical relation negociate the sharing of responsabilities and competences. The claiming of these competences is carried out through the use of management tools that are indispensable supports for the interaction. Like the behaviors of the monkeys in their societies, people at work are continually renegotiating the power and the hierarchical ranks in such a way that the roles assigned to middle management are never definitively stabilised and are really created during the action. This uncertainty in the assignment of roles is revealed by the way the partners claim their "territories of competence" and the way they take up the struggle to protect and enlarge these territories. The organisational changes go together with the decreasing of the rules, norms and management tools. . . All these objects which help persons in charge to ensure their assigned roles. These objects are like resources that people use in order to defend their "territories of competence" since they offer a "frame" to the interactions, organise the experience of people and provide legitimacy to the persons in charge. When these bureaucratic objects fail the roles of middle management lose credibility, the personal and subjective dimension come to light and give free vent to negociation and objection. The uncertainty increases, persons in charge experiment tensions and have to hold competences to re establish the "good manners" of the "frame", that is to say the legitimacy of heir intervention.