Contenu du sommaire : Gérer les carrières ?

Gérer les carrières ?

• Introduction

  • Gérer les carrières des cadres de la fonction publique - M. Gilles Jeannot, Chercheur au Laboratoire "techniques, territoires et sociétés" (LATTS), Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées p. 553

• Les réformes en débat

  • Modèles de gestion des compétences en Europe - Mmes Annie Hondeghem, Professeur,Belgique, Sylvia Horton, Chargée de cours, Royaume-Uni, et Sarah Scheepers, Chercheuse, Belgique p. 561
    Models of Competency Management in Europe. In the Human Resources Management (HRM) literature, competency management ideas are very widespread. In the last decade this new approach to personnel management has been introduced into the public sector in Europe, although at a different pace in each country. Competency management is leading to new ways of looking at careers in the public sector. Traditionally careers have been based on qualifications, examinations and seniority. In a competency-based system careers are linked to personal skills, attitudes and behaviours, which are required in the job and people are seen as ‘assets'to be developed, motivated and used. In this article we first describe the origins of the competency movement and clarify some conceptual issues. Second, we examine two examples of different systems of competency-based management : the British senior civil service and the Belgian federal civil service. Third, we discuss the added value of competency management (for the public sector) and deal with some problems, which have been encountered in practice.
  • De la réforme des classifications à une logique de compétence à La Poste - M. Thierry Crop, Directeur des ressources humaines, direction des clientèles financières de La Poste p. 577
    The Classification reform at The Post : towards a Competence Rationale. In order to increase the professionalism of its agents, the Post introduced a reform in classification establishing a link between grade and function. This meant that an agent could not fulfil a function at a given level without having the grade linked to that function. In general, the new system of human resource management put in place by the Post aims essentially at professionalisation and simplification. The implementation of this reform has not been without difficulties and constraints, in particular that of adapting a management mechanism to a certain number of regulations pertaining to civil service status. Another aspect of the reform concerns promotion, which can be obtained in two ways : either the agent's competencies validate his/her capacity to take on greater responsibility, or the agent's potential and capacity to acquire competencies through training are taken into account. In short, the reform's main tendency consists in the introduction of a competence rationale.
  • Les emplois de direction dans les collectivités territoriales : la capacité d'adaptation, vertu première - M. Bernard Perrin, Administrateur territorial honoraire p. 583
    Territorial Top-level Administrators : Adaptability is Primordial. Territorial civil service is a good example of the seemingly unavoidable slipping from a career system — as it continues to exist in its more or less pristine form in France today — to the job system found in the majority of neighbouring countries. This is particularly true as concerns the career management of top-level territorial administrators, if only because their jobs as directors are more and more subject to local and regional political changes. Furthermore, administrative directors as a whole must deal with increasingly diverse tasks. The high criteria of competitive examinations along with the specialized training, dispensed in part by the École nationale d'administration, will doubtless make it possible to face this challenge.
  • De la gestion prévisionnelle des effectifs, des emplois et des compétences (GPEEC) aux cadres statutaires : la progressive émergence de la notion de "métier" dans la fonction publique d'Etat en France - M. Gilles Jeannot, Chercheur au Laboratoire "techniques, territoires et sociétés" (LATTS), Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées p. 595
    From the Planned Management of Staff, Jobs and Competencies towards a New Statutory Framework : The Gradual Emergence of a job approch (métier) in the French civil service. The term métier sums up a project of gradual reform in French civil service staffing policy. The term was introduced along with methods aiming to plan ahead for changes in staff and professional know-how through the use of “referentials” listing the totality of “job types” necessary to fulfil all administrative needs and the competencies associated with them. An analysis of the actual uses of these methods shows the failure of a plan to develop a tool that could serve as a basis for all human resource management functions. However, the procedure turned out to be operational so far as meeting the more precise and strategic needs of various ministries was concerned : aid in the requalification of civil servants whose posts might become unnecessary due to new technologies or institutional change, aid in the career management or in favouring the mobility of civil servants with support functions for several ministries ; in addition, it served as a basis for discussion between those receiving allocations and those responsible for a particular unit, with a view to management control. On the whole, the main point is the recognition of the importance of skills and professionalism over and above membership in a corps, or the “profession”. The same idea can be found in a recent report of the Conseil d'État, suggesting that those in charge of a particular unit be given the means to choose staff according to individuals'professional background and acquired competencies rather than according to the status of their original corps. Thus the idea of métier is used to create a link between two moving entities : on one hand the changing missions of public organizations, on the other the changing missions of individuals in the course of a career. Reference to métier thus consists more in renewing the model of a civil service career than in questioning its relevance.
  • Stratégies et pratiques de développement des compétences des cadres dans les organisations publiques - M. Jacques Bourgault, Professeur à l'Université de Québec, Canada p. 609
    Strategies and Practices for the Development of top-level administrative Competencies in Public Organizations. The article describes how competencies management in the main English-speaking countries. In order to meet various demands (cost, adaptability, evaluation, etc.), these countries have put in place a new type of management for top-level state administrators based on competencies and not on careers. The article shows the effects of this new system on human resource management, mainly a new approach to human resources based primarily on the notion of competence and much less on the former system of competitive examinations, diplomas and seniority. It describes the theoretical and practical means by which this competence approach has been implemented, through an analysis of the most significant experiments carried out in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

• Parcours de carrière des cadres et pratiques de gestion

  • Les carrières des directeurs d'hôpital - M. François-Xavier Schweyer, Professeur de sociologie à l'Ecole nationale de la santé publique p. 623
    Hospital Directors Careers. Hospital directors constitute a statutory profession in the French sense. Analysis shows how the link has slowly been forged between a career in the sense of rank or hierarchy and one based on professional experience. Historically, career management can be divided into three periods : first a pre-bureaucratic period characterised by the mobilisation of a professional group which, between 1941 — 1969 continually demanded improved status (the competitive examination for access to the profession had no real impact on the constitution of the professional body and there was no definite career profile); then, during the bureaucratic period, from 1969 to 1988, a hospital policy led by the state was gradually put in place, along with the constitution of a true career model (recruitment by an effective, impartially marked competitive examination, and the appearance of differentiated functions); and finally a third period under the banner of modernisation and the adoption of the categories of new public management : from 1988 onwards, career strategies and profiles became diversified and a recognition of competencies slowly emerged. Although this last period has continued to align itself along the bureaucratic rationale of a statutory career, it now takes into account the career itself, assessed in terms of the posts occupied. So far, whatever opposition may exist between these two notions has been overcome thanks to the fact that the corps of hospital directors has been in control of the production of its elites and that the recognition of competence has been based on professional criteria.
  • Le droit à la carrière des officiers de la marine - M. Jean SAGLIO, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Centre de recherches Innovation socio-technique et organisations industrielles (CRISTO), Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble p. 639
    Marine officers' Right to a Career. The “right to a career” — in other words, a guarantee of job stability and advancement — is presented here as one of the advantages of belonging to the French civil service. It is situated in the wider framework of a system of employer-employee relations and commitments of a diverse nature that the author suggests calling “job exchanges”. In that particular sense, the marine officer's career constitutes an archetype : above and beyond a contract, the relationship is one of a commitment measured in time and remunerated economically and symbolically. It reconciles two notions in an exemplary manner : the first is statutory, in the sense that it is attached to the rank of officer and implies having successfully passed through the preceding ranks, independently of the posts or jobs occupied; the second is linked to the possibility given to marine officers of pursuing a career by means of job progression, thanks to a recognition of competencies acquired in various posts or during special training, to a greater or lesser degree following set itineraries.
  • L'espace des carrières des ingénieurs de l'équipement dans le public et le privé (1800-2000) - MM. Konstantinos Chatzis et Georges Ribeill, Chercheurs au Laboratoire "techniques, territoires et sociétés" (LATTS), Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées p. 651
    Career Horizons for Public Works Engineers in the Public and Private Sectors (1800-2000). This article analyses the evolution over the last two centuries of career horizons for public works engineers — or the whole of the various avenues of public and private sector activities in which public works engineers are present at a given time. Divided into three chronological periods, the overall picture shows that public works engineers have gradually enlarged their original working areas (construction and maintenance of transport communication for the state). Described with the aid of numerous tables, this spreading out concerns both the opening out onto new employers (from the state to private enterprise and local authorities) as well as onto new domains within the state (research, management, environment).
  • L'accès des femmes aux emplois supérieurs dans la fonction publique : avancées et résistances - L'exemple du ministère de l'équipement de l'équipement - Mmes G. Doniol Shaw, Chercheuse au Laboratoire "techniques, territoires et sociétés" (LATTS), CNRS, et L. Le Douarin, Docteur en sociologie, Chercheuse au Laboratoire "sociologie des usages et du traitement statistique de l'information" de France-télécom p. 671
  • Un exemple de réforme réussie : le statut des chefs d'établissement de l'enseignement secondaire - Mme Céline Wiener, Inspectrice générale honoraire de l'administration de l'éducation nationale et de la recherche p. 687
    A Successful Reform : the Status of Secondary School Directors. The article describes in detail the reform process regarding the status of secondary school directors, which took place between 1998 and 2000. A rather rare example of successful reform, one of the factors in its favour was that of encompassing the career of a school director as a whole, taking into account not only material advantages such as salary and promotion, but also general working conditions and scope of responsibilities. Furthermore, the procedure that was adopted had the great advantage of including all partners, agents and users, under the aegis of independent persons. This sort of consultation, favouring independence and cooperation, made it possible to reach an agreement on what the various components of the job of school director were, to inform those concerned, and to adjust means to responsibilities, thus ending a long period of crisis in the status of secondary school directors.
  • Les marges de manoeuvre de la gestion des carrières des personnels d'encadrement de la fonction publique d'Etat. L'enjeu des commissions administratives paritaires - Témoignages recueillis par Jean Barouillet, Patrick Hallinger, Marie-Claude Kervella, Daniel Matthieu, Marie-France Moneger-Guyomarc'h et Serge Vallemont recueillis par Gilles Jeannot p. 699
    Room for maneuver in the Civil Service Management : Administrative Joint Commissions. Testimonies. The principles of status in the civil service rest on the recognition of agents' “professional value”. However, in the day-to-day reality of career management, texts are interpreted in such a way as to leave room for seniority as well as for impersonal, bureaucratic regulations, thus reducing the recognition of an individual's “value” to that of the competitive examination required for access the post. Though such practices exist in some parts of the civil service, they are not at all general, and are in fact entirely absent in some sectors of the administration. The testimonies presented here are those of individuals in charge of staff management and union representatives. They provide examples of “true” human resource management and suggest under what conditions they could exist elsewhere. They also explain certain problems that arise, in particular those linked to the “hard core” of career management, the administrative parity commissions (CAP).

• Etudes

  • La reconfiguration de l'administration centrale - M. Jacques Chevallier, Professeur à l'Université de Paris II Panthéon-Assas, directeur du Centre d'études et de recherches de science administrative (CERSA) p. 715
    Reconfiguring Central Administration Jacques Chevallier. The article looks at how French central administration is slowly and patiently being reorganized in an effort to remedy the three major dysfunctions from which its structures have traditionally suffered : the continual regrouping of ministries, the excessive enlargement in staff and functions of ministerial cabinets, and the heterogeneity of the internal organization of ministries. With the emergence of new needs and criteria for action, remedies applied in the 60s — fusion of ministries and recourse to ministerial secretaries-general — did not last long. The reorientation of the state around strategic functions and the carrying out of the subsidiarity principle in fact forced central administration into a radical revision of its role, all the more necessary due to the increasing importance of the efficiency standard for public action and its main concrete manifestation, the 2001 Finance Act. Successive reforms, introduced since the beginning of the 1990s have undeniably had positive effects, such as the generalization of the distinction between strategic and operational functions and the reorganization of certain services (regrouping of directorates and reappearance of ministerial secretaries-general). Two important difficulties nonetheless persist : the first is the force of inertia of the traditional organizational rationale; the second is the difficult coexistence between this latter, based on a management approach, and the organisational rationale issuing from recent reforms and based on planning.

• Chroniques

  • Chronique de l'administration - Bénédicte Delaunay, Michel Le Clainche, Hervé Rihal et Luc Rouban p. 727
  • Chronique du secteur public économique - André G. Delion et Michel Durupty p. 749