Abstract :
[en] This paper tends to explore the potential influence of skills management devices on individual careers. Starting from a distinction between the main typical configurations which may characterize skills management initiatives, we discuss the following hypothesis: each configuration reveals what may be called a « path presupposition », i.e. a particular conception of the individual career, embedded in the various devices destined to manage employees’ competences.
Confronted to an empirical material coming from 30 in-depth interviews with employees selected in Belgian companies reflecting each typical configuration, our initial hypothesis needs to be refined.
An in-depth analysis of our empirical material highlights the complex interaction between individual variables (gender, qualification, professional experience, locus of control, social capital, seniority, etc.) and organizational answers (training, mobility, conversion of short-term into long-term contracts, etc.) depending on contextual evolutions, the latter likely to provoke radical redefinitions of the existing HR policies. Any individual career thus results from a permanent interaction between skills management configurations, personal traits generating multiple aspirations and organizational answers to these demands, reflecting contrasted management philosophies. Such a co-construction process permanently evolves, like the skills management configurations themselves, which concretely invalidates the hypothesis of a direct influence of skill management devices on individual careers.
Research center :
Laboratoire d'Etudes sur les Nouvelles Technologies de l'Information, la Communication, l'Innovation et le Changement - LENTIC
