Abstract EN:

The preeminent french "industrial democracy" is now compelled to change faced not only with the fierce international competition but also with the new dimensions of cooperative management in organizations. To cope with these turbulences, we focused our research on the renewment of "traditional power relations" between the hierarchy and the unions with a hypothesis that the solutions for effectiveness are not extra-organizational but intra-organizational with two alternatives : 1. The rationalization of hierarchical system 2. The mobilization of human resources. To reply to our problematics, we have compared two companies, one has an american type of management and the other has a french type of management. In the american company, the logic of rationalization implies that the power games are processed to reinforce the organizational performances; while, in the french company, the organizational power is reduced to a zero-sum game between the hierarchy and the unions, where the actors seek more to increase their power than to contribute to the organizational performance and the interventions of unions are not in tune with the workers aspirations. We've noted that the french company's organizational effectiveness is weakened