Crisis, Restructuringâ And Changes: Mirrorsâ Enlarging Multiple Management Requirements

Managing an organization by interconnecting its various resources (Penrose, 1959; Barney, 1991; Allouche, 2006) involves analyzing its skills and capacities and using that data to develop a strategy. In crisis management, cost and quality do not suffice, you need to “add some art to it (Mintzberg, 1989, p.50). In difficult situations, analysis not only involves selecting probabilities and indicators, comparing results, locating discrepancies, and interpreting variables and ratios, but also identifying differences, determining causes and, faced with symptoms and constraints, discerning what can and must be adjusted, refocused and surpassed. Because heterogeneity is a valuable aspect (Ardoino & de Peretti, 1998), it is imperative to rationalize without impoverishing. Coordination (Joffre & Montmorillon, 2001; Follett, 2002) is only possible after actively and carefully observing and listening, in order to select and perfect the most appropriate know-how, procedures and mechanisms. Within organizations, rationality, which is imperative to setting and meeting objectives, is part of the reflection and communication capable of justifying them and making them socially acceptable. Referring to performance indicators (employee ratios, unit labour costs…) could not narrow management to a more accounting-based than social perspective (Penan, 1999) and deliver the mechanics of the profession to the machines and processes, by distancing the engineers and technicians from daily tasks. To remain efficient in such diverse situations, setting a standard would be complex and one could only be defined and implemented if the diagnosis was being shared, or at least understood (Daigne, 1991) and internalized (Roussel, 2011). It is more profitable and sustainable to enforce rather than to force, but it is important to be attentive and to find the words to convince, to “make them work (Chauvigné, 2011). Standardization simplifies, imposes arbitration, but cannot trivialize because it is important to take into account the variety of elements in the system as well as their interactions (Von Bertalanffy, 1975; Thiétart, 2001).