Management Through Competence an Emerging Managerial Practice Within French Companies: From Discourse to Practices

Abstract

For a long time and until now, the qualification model has been considered a major criterion for defining jobs. It structures training, classification grids and many other forms of work organization. But the emergence and then the recent diffusion of the "logic of competence", both within companies and in research, reveals new horizons in relation to the organization of work and the management of the workforce. This article intends to provide a large number of statistical indicators for evaluating and measuring the emergence of the "logic of competence". We have tried to establish a typology of the different personnel management practices in order to identify the real diffusion of the "logic of competence" as a new mode of workforce management at the level of the French company. Statistical processing, using the 2004-2005 REPONSE survey, is carried out. We will then see that this new practice is currently quite well established within French companies.