Anca Boboc^[1] and Jean-Luc Metzger^[2]

Involving people: a recurrent and ambiguous managerial desire

This chapter concerns the study of participation management. More precisely, our analysis is based on an empirical investigation of two human resources systems aimed at involving employees in the production of ‘innovations’^[3]. This type of socio-technical system, introduced since the beginning of the 2000s in large organisations, can be placed in two lines of work.

The first concerns all the experiments carried out since the 1980s, at the crossroads of the Auroux laws (direct expression groups) and participative management (quality circles). These experiments, which encourage deliberation between producers and organisers, have given rise to numerous studies, summarised in particular by Anni Borzeix and Danièle Linhart (1988), as well as by Dominique Martin (1994; 1995) and, more recently, by Borzeix et al. These analyses point to the ambiguous and multidimensional nature of participative management: it often appears to be an attempt at instrumentalisation, whereby management tries to get employees to participate in the prescribed organisational changes. Besides, it often comes into tension with individualising HRM systems, and so the exercise of a truly deliberative activity remains rare. Finally, the inequalities of capital between employees, as well as the disparity of local organisational frameworks, nuance the assertion that the implementation of these socio-technical systems would increase the ‘capacity to do’.

This dimension is at the heart of the second line of work, consisting of experiments that intend to liberate work and make companies ‘agile’. While their promoters seek to overcome some of the limitations of participative management, particularly by promoting the autonomy of producers and encouraging their individual empowerment, the study of their implementation highlights the existence of numerous operational difficulties: inadequate modes of regulation, loss of reference points, weariness of the most involved people, dependence on the leader figure, etc. (Gilbert et al., 2017; Boboc and Metzger, 2020). These studies also show forms of exclusion –from isolation to dismissal– as well as forms of over-commitment and over-attachment, which are detrimental to health. Finally, in order to resolve the difficulties of all kinds involved in their local application, the support of middle-level management is essential. In fact, ‘liberating work’ consists in removing these hierarchical levels so that employees may solve difficulties by themselves, even if they do not have the necessary resources to do so (Rousseau and Ruffier, 2017).

The two experiments we studied in 2018 and 2019 also aim to promote collective deliberation and, in part, to liberate work, in this case the work of innovation. They have several specific features:

• Decentralisation: they offer all the company’s employees the possibility of participating in the production of innovations, by suggesting either product or service ideas or ways of improving their work.
• Digitisation: the expression of these suggestions requires the use of the corporate social network.
• Supervised democratisation: the ‘governance’ of the idea selection process aims to combine instrumental reason –groups of ‘experts’, heads of internal departments– with the individual opinions of professionals in the form of an ‘audience’, made up of employees who ‘vote’ for or comment on the ‘ideas’ put forward by their colleagues.

How do employees appropriate these socio-technical systems, which are based both on provoked participation (Martin, 1995) and on creativity management (Cihuelo, 2020)? What reasons lead them to propose ideas and to vote for some of them, to formulate comments? Under what conditions are certain ideas selected? To provide some answers, after describing the two devices (section 2) and the survey methodology (section 3), we examine the reasons for participation (4.1), the socio-organisational conditions that promote or, on the contrary, hinder deliberation (4.2), and discuss the extent to which a process of work liberation has been initiated (4.3). First, we will present our framework of analysis (section 1).

1. Deliberation and liberation from work: what conditions in the company?

In this section we discuss the socio-organisational conditions most likely to enable deliberation and liberation from work.

1.1. Deliberation in the company

J. Habermas (1987) defines deliberation in an ideal situation of communication as the exchange of arguments between equals, all of whom have the right to express themselves and give their opinion, sincerely respecting the principle of the most rational argument and motivated by the search for the common good, to the detriment of individual interests. This is what Habermas calls ‘rational activity oriented towards inter-understanding’, which is only possible in a space free of domination, inequality and the influence of emotions.

Any restriction of these ideal conditions alters the authenticity of the deliberation. However, in the specific case of companies, many operational obstacles must be taken into account, such as power and competition relations which, by favouring individual interests or those of certain departments, are opposed to the search for the ‘common good’ (that of the company, as well as all stakeholders). Inequalities in the ability to express oneself publicly (oratory, rhetoric) greatly reduce the requirement of equality between peers. Moreover, giving one’s opinion and suggesting proposals publicly, in front of the circle of peers and in front of the management, not only supposes to expose oneself to judgements that may have an impact on one’s career, but also to make one’s activity more transparent and lose some room for manoeuvre (tacit character of practices).

To all these considerations, which are valid in general, we can add the obstacles specific to socio-technical systems that mobilise employee ‘voting’ and require the use of digital tools. With regard to the first point, ‘the right to express oneself (to criticise and propose) cannot be equated with the mere right to vote’ (Borzeix and Linhart, 1988). The latter is only a pale substitute for the exchange of arguments between peers, especially as one cannot vote ‘against’, even if one can make negative comments. As for the so-called collaborative tools, there are several reasons why their use is unevenly distributed, which reduces, a priori, effective deliberation to a subset of employees: for Jullien et al. (2011), it is the requirement of ‘return on investment’ accompanying participation in these collaborative spaces, a requirement that excludes employees lacking the relevant capital; for Imhoff (2017), it is the individualisation of work and forms of recognition; for Boboc et al. (2015), it is the difficulty of discussing online the very meaning of acts of communication and possible differences of interpretation. On the other hand, the use of digital tools is the more developed as it makes it possible to signal one’s appetite for digital technology, collaborative practices or innovation (Roudaut and Jullien, 2017).

In short, the companies’ socio-organisational characteristics, with their power relations and competition, are far from the ideal model of deliberation, restricting access to a limited number of employees. To what extent, however, do the socio-technical systems that are supposed to involve employees change this observation?

As we have indicated, the implementation of participation management is fraught with tensions, two of which seem to us to be decisive: those existing between the managerial logic from which these socio-technical systems cannot escape and the logics of the professional groups to which they are addressed; and those emerging within the various professional groups themselves, between those who want to get involved in the socio-technical system and those who prefer to stay away. These two sets of tensions combine to raise the question of which configurations are most conducive to deliberative practices and processes of partial liberation of work when faced with the introduction of a socio-technical system which seeks to decentralise innovation and requires the use of a corporate social network.

1.2. Management logic and work liberation

First of all, we use the category of management device (dispositif de gestion) to designate the sets of principles, approaches, tools, and actors that aim to intervene in the organisation of work in order to increase its effectiveness (Maugeri, 2001). The interest of this category is that it does not focus on the material dimension of management fact (fait gestionnaire) but takes into account the various professional groups that play a role in its extension, particularly the managers themselves. The latter seek to base their legitimacy on their ability to define collective efficiency in an organised environment as rationally as possible. We can then speak of organisational work (Terssac, 1998; Craipeau and Metzger, 2010) to designate this particular category of activity, which consists of either directly controlling the activity of other professional groups or subtly orienting its evolution.

But organising the work of others often means interfering with work that had already been done autonomously by the members of the professional groups themselves (Reynaud, 1989; Dujarier, 2006). The introduction and implementation of management tools can therefore be interpreted as a more or less conflictual and unbalanced encounter between, on the one hand, the professional group of managers and, on the other hand, each individual professional group affected by the decisions of the former. Some of the professionals find, or think they find, an opportunity to improve their position, their career prospects, etc., in the use of this or that management device.

1.3. Configurations for deliberation

In order to account for the internal tensions within professional groups following the introduction of management devices (dispositif de gestion)^[4], Norbert Alter (2000) distinguishes a first category of configurations, which could be described as ‘self-managed’. Groups of employees, organising themselves into networks, develop informal practices and autonomous regulations, more or less transgressive, around the system of rules prescribed by the introduction of these devices. If operators take the risk of transgressing norms, of diverting prescribed uses, it is not to oppose management on principle but, first of all, out of loyalty ‘to the objectives set by their company, their professional environment or their organisation’ (Alter, 2000, p. 24). Ordinary innovation actors must also possess a set of resources: relevant social capital –a network of peers–; a ‘cultural capacity to envisage new norms’ (Alter, 2000, p. 22); and the ability to ‘take the risk of giving in order to (perhaps) receive in return’ (p. 217). When, moreover, these actors manage to convince management of the strategic interest of the solutions they have invented, the latter are institutionalised. This configuration thus offers a framework conducive to processes of partial liberation of work, thanks to the practice, at least temporary, of deliberation between non-standard producers and organisers.

N. Alter identifies a second category of configurations which can be described as ‘managerial-dogmatic’. It corresponds to the multiple reorganisations, restructurings, transformations of HRM modes (management devices). Its dogmatic character stems from the fact that it leaves no room for adaptation or deliberation, entering into direct conflict with professional logics. Employees, lacking the relevant capacities identified above and unable to organise themselves into dissident networks, adopt an attitude of adherence, implement the prescriptions, and comply with managerial expectations. On the surface, the socio-technical system is a success, since the new instructions are implemented and there is no ‘resistance’. But ‘these actors do not transform the initial decision. They adapt to it and adapt it to their career concerns as best as they can’ (Alter, 2000, p. 110).

This second configuration is not very conducive to work deliberation and liberation.

After presenting the main characteristics and the way in which the materials were collected, we will apply the analytical framework discussed in this section.

2. Presentation of the two devices

The two socio-technical systems we are interested in were tested by the HR department of a multinational company, as part of its monitoring and forecasting mission. These two participation devices, the ‘wall of ideas’ and the ‘innovation challenges’, consist in encouraging employees to express ‘innovation ideas’ or to describe ‘good practices’ and, after a standardised selection process, fostering their development and making them accessible to a larger number of employees within the different entities of the company (marketing of offers for companies, relations with the main customers, network engineering, purchasing, strategy, accounting, etc.).

2.1. The wall of ideas

Based on the same principle as the suggestion box, employees freely submit proposals for improvement or new ideas using a space available within the company’s internal social network. The submission of ideas takes place in fixed periods, from three to six months, announced in advance by the organisers.

Among the organisers of the wall of ideas, there is an ‘ambassador’ who is the entry point for the implementation of the tool in a given entity or country, configuring the management and animation rules in his or her local context. The ambassador gathers, on the one hand, facilitators to enhance the ideas posted and, on the other hand, experts in the field corresponding to these ideas. The experts can participate in evaluating an idea at the invitation of the facilitation team or on their own initiative.

Putting an idea on the wall requires a standardised input procedure: a) giving the idea a name –e.g., ‘coffee break’–; b) stating it using the form of ‘I would like’ – e.g., ‘I would like to have “coffee breaks” in videoconferences to share a friendly moment during this period of teleworking’–; c) explaining its usefulness – continuing with the same example, ‘for the well-being of employees’–; d) specifying the audience for it –all employees of the company–; e) summarising it in a few lines; f) and classifying it according to the proposed themes (network, customer experience, big data, smart cities, etc.). Other people then vote and leave comments (including negative ones if they don’t like the idea).

At the end of each season, the top five ideas (based on the votes received) are reviewed by experts and the winners become involved in the development and implementation of their solutions.

2.2. The challenges

Each ‘challenge’ takes the form of an experimental scheme aimed at specifying a pre-project carried out by a ‘sponsor’ (a director of a department or entity who needs to be supplied with information on the theme he or she is proposing for the challenge and who has a budget to do so). The challenge therefore has a very specific theme, which is considered strategic for the company (e.g., how can we reduce our company’s impact on the environment?; how can we be more attentive to and better support our colleagues with disabilities to better live together?; knowledge management; etc.). An organising committee, consisting of the sponsor, other experts and managers linked to the theme, and a person who is familiar with the implementation and running of the challenges, examines the ideas brought by the participants. The organising committee differs from challenge to challenge. Challenges can be proposed for all divisions of the company, be they technical (telecommunications, Internet, IT), management, marketing/sales, etc. Each theme responds to the need expressed by a sponsor who undertakes to support the winning idea, most often by contributing to the production of a prototype. The sponsor has a hierarchical position that allows him or her to negotiate with the various business lines and a budget to study the idea in more detail and develop it. This socio-technical system is intended to be collaborative, in the sense that its objective is not only to collect ideas, but also to have them co-constructed by the participants.

The challenges take place over a given period (about three months), specified at the outset, and consist of four phases.

1. In the first phase, participants formulate ideas to contribute to the proposed theme. They can also comment on those of others. Each participation or interaction is rewarded with points, according to a standardised scale, established by the designers of the socio-technical system and made public. The number of points varies according to the number of connections and the type of intervention: submission of an idea, comment, commitment to follow the evolution of an idea or a participant. The contribution to the development of an idea brings a significant number of points.
2. In a second phase, the members of the organising committee make a first selection of ideas, taking into account: the number of points accumulated by those who submitted the ideas; the feasibility of the proposal; its potential economic value; its originality; and the enigmatic ‘personal hunches’. This can be seen as the first phase of deliberation, even if it is limited to the members of the Organising Committee and is partially framed by the points system.
3. In the third phase, participants can ‘invest the points’ they have earned to support ideas they like, which is a way of extending the practice of voting. If they ‘bet’ on a winning idea, their number of points increases considerably, which can lead them to become part of a ‘top investor’ and benefit from gains such as being on the ‘honour roll’ and small gifts (virtual reality headsets, speakers, mobile phone chargers, a sports bag, etc.). This approach has a playful dimension to select and encourage the development of ‘good ideas’.
4. In the final phase, ten ideas are selected (for the same challenge). The employees who proposed them are invited to present them to a jury larger than the organising committee alone, and it is this jury (often international and multidisciplinary) that chooses the winning idea and ranks the other nine in order of priority. This phase is the closest to what could be called a ‘deliberation’. However, this deliberation is largely framed by the prior selections, whether in terms of the composition of the Organising Committee and the jury, or in terms of the different phases of the idea selection process.

The ideas that are rated highest by the jury are proposed to internal divisions that may be interested in developing them.

For the winning idea, the person who proposed it undertakes to develop it further, with the help of the sponsor and possibly other members of the organising committee.

Unlike the wall of ideas, in the case of the challenge we followed, participation here functions more as a tool for implementing a decision already taken by management, for example, by finding uses for a technology the deployment of which had already been agreed.

As can be seen, both of these devices have the characteristics of management devices. On the one hand, it was experts in innovation management and IT who defined and developed both instruments and their operating principles. On the other hand, beyond the stated aim of involving employees, the objective is also to accelerate the innovation process –more precisely, to speed up the transition between ideas and their actual realisation– and thus to make the organisation more flexible, which should ultimately contribute to boosting innovation capacity and increasing productivity.

3. Survey methodology and initial results

3.1. Data collecting method

In total, 33 qualitative interviews lasting approximately one hour were conducted, 12 with participants in the wall of ideas, 15 with participants in a technology challenge, and 6 with project leaders –wall of ideas and challenge sponsors. For both socio-technical systems, the sample was constructed on the basis of the number of ideas submitted and the number of votes/commentaries received^[5].

For the wall of ideas, four categories of participants were identified: single participation and low score; single participation and high score; multiple participations (regardless of score); high score (regardless of number of participations).

In addition, for the challenge we included people who proposed an idea and had few votes/comments, people who commented or voted without proposing ideas, people who were among those selected by the jury, and people who invested many points in the ideas of others. We looked at a challenge that took place over four months and in which almost 650 employees participated. The call was launched on a department that works specifically on innovation development.

3.2. Tension between decentralising intentions and management practices

Using the analysis model developed in section 1 and in view of the characteristics of these two devices, we will hypothesise that their implementation is caught between two sets of strategies, each set being itself conducive to internal competitions:

• On the one hand, a decentralising intention, supported by the designers of the participatory system. Indeed, the free use of the company’s social network and the way in which the selection of ideas is organised –employee vote, team of experts from the different divisions– seem to offer enough margin to bypass the managerial logic;
• On the other hand, the managerial logics, notably held by the various technical divisions with the necessary expertise to develop ideas, but which are governed by pre-established parameters and indications that do not always leave time to discuss the relevance of the idea and to find the means to make such expertise available. This willingness to (re)centralise can then be a source of tension between the company management and the technical divisions, as well as between the technical divisions themselves.

If this is the impression that emerges from an examination of formal procedures, what about actual practice? How do employees who ‘participate’ perceive these arrangements? What leads them to engage in them? Do some of them manage to enter the circle of deliberation, to influence its course and, in this way, to counterbalance the (re)centralising tendencies? Before proposing some answers (section 4), we shall give a quick overview of the experiments.

3.3. Participation in figures

The two devices have been applied in some twenty countries in which the multinational company is present. In two and a half years, around 1,800 proposals have been posted on the various walls of ideas. They have given rise to nearly 8,000 comments and 37,500 votes. These ‘ideas’ were classified as follows: Employee experience, 17%; Network, 16%; Customer relations, 15%; Communication and corporate image, 6%; Relations with client companies, 4%; the other ideas were distributed in the remaining categories. These suggestions may concern the private sphere and propose solutions for customers (geolocating their lost credit card; facilitating the use of electronic signatures; securing access to their space by preventing piracy; etc.) or they may also concern the company (fighting against insecurity in shops, improving the digital management of working trucks, etc.).

For the challenges, it is difficult to establish a quantitative assessment of participation, as it fluctuates according to the content of the ‘challenges’, the size of the entity that sets them up, and the interest they arouse among employees. To give an overview, at the time of writing there are 15 challenges in the collection phase, three in the investment phase and 120 completed. The number of participants per challenge generally ranges from a dozen to almost 1,000. In total, 7,900 employees participated and 2,900 ideas were submitted. In 2019, a particularly large challenge on the environment brought together 7,500 employees.

4. Data analysis or how the tension between the two types of logics promotes or hinders deliberation and thus liberation

Why do employees participate in these ‘innovation’ socio-technical systems when they are not obliged to do so and the rewards they can expect are at best symbolic?

4.1. The two levels of participation

Whether in the ‘wall of ideas’ or the ‘challenges’, employees put forward two reasons for their participation: seeking the company’s interest –taking into account the managerial logic– and respect for professional cultures (emphasis on professional logic). However, two typical participation strategies must be distinguished according to the employees’ objectives and resources.

For a first group of employees, participation simply consists in posting their ‘idea’, considering that if the idea is relevant, it will ‘naturally’ find an echo. They do not ‘campaign’ for their proposal to be selected. This is for two reasons linked to their professional culture: because influencing the votes would be tantamount to ‘cheating’ and because each professional group has to stay within its own field of competence. Outside this perimeter, they defer to the company’s legitimate bodies, as explained by this technician in preventive network maintenance who tabled an idea on the reporting of network changes:

I was told that the idea was good, but that for the moment it cannot be developed because there are no computer gateways. […] Basically speaking, you have two applications, and each one does a very specific job. If there is a gateway, it means that the information you put in the first one is reflected in the second. But apparently, there are no such bridges… The idea is good, but we don’t know how to do it. […] So afterwards, it’s not up to me to decide whether we should go further. […] It would have been necessary for the local process leaders to take the subject head on. It’s not up to me. […] IT specialists should be involved in studying the principle and developing gateways. (Robert)

This is also the case of an assistant director of a technical unit who uses the wall of ideas to point out the risks represented by the loss of skills due to mass retirements. The solution she proposes concerns the institutionalisation of tutoring.

I realised that in my department there is a growing lack of technical knowledge. It’s a pity, because a lot of the older staff leave with their knowledge and don’t pass it on. […] This has been going on for a long time and we really need to stop it and become aware of it, because, even though we have changed technology, we still need the technical knowledge of the old technologies. […] I’ve adopted it in my team, but I think that tutoring should be established by the management so that it’s performed automatically. […] I spoke to my manager about it, but it didn’t go any further. So I used the wall of ideas to raise the alarm. (Laure)

The particular context in which the employee operates does not allow her to take the idea any further. Thus, although acting individually, in complete independence, the participation of these employees –the formulation of an idea– is made available to all, without any significant investment –the future of the idea is left at the company’s discretion–, without any commitment to deliberation, or any particular expectation of return on investment. In these configurations, everything happens as if the employee, unable to deliberate, renounced his right to do so and implicitly delegated it to bodies deemed legitimate.

The renouncement to participate in deliberation leads us to describe this configuration as dogmatic-managerial; but the fact that the participants contribute to the general interest –taking the risk of giving without certainty of return– nuances this observation in the direction of the self-management configuration. In this case, deliberation is hampered locally. These actors do not seek to mobilise anyone to develop their idea, as they find it difficult to call on help from outside their entity (as in the case of computer gateways) or to intervene at higher levels (in the case of tutoring), since they do not have the sufficient relational capital or the necessary position.

A second group of participants goes much further in their participation. Possessing greater social and relational capital than the first group, they go beyond their local context and know how to mobilise their relational network to support their idea: participation then consists in ‘getting’ the members of this collective to vote and to comment. This is the case, for example, of an HR manager who looks after many shops in a given region and who, because of her job, is very mobile and regularly visits those establishments. She has thus built up a large network of contacts, which she can count on to vote for her idea (a device to give the alarm in the event of a security problem in the shop), which attends to a need she heard during her visits:

The public [employees voting and commenting] voted for my idea. They came to confirm that the idea I was putting forward made sense. And to complete this vision, I went looking for people who might be interested, so that they could come and say whether it was a good or bad idea. And they all got involved, which led me to have not only a very high number of comments on one of the ideas I had put forward, but also a number of votes, which was quite honourable and very promising regarding the interest in deploying this idea. (Pascale)

The public nature of ideas and the comments they generate (more or less spontaneously) provide the institutional visibility which some positions in the organisation lack. However, to take advantage of this visibility, one must take the risk of exposing oneself, of giving without the assurance of receiving the slightest retribution in return, not to mention the risk of seeing one’s suggestions appropriated by others. In addition, it is necessary to have previously acquired rhetorical and writing skills adapted to the communication formats of digital social networks. This set of resources is emblematically embodied by this HR manager:

I find that our social network opens up and de-isolates people who are scattered in the field. And since only what is seen is recognised, the closer you are to the director, the more likely you are to have your actions recognised. So I, for instance, am very far from the decision-making centre. Well, the social network gives me an opportunity to express myself. This implies a great deal of autonomy to be able to go there and this is not given to everyone, I am aware of that. The fact of being able to express oneself in writing, not everyone has this capacity either […] in any case, I took this opportunity. (Pascale)

In order to participate fully in innovation processes, one must also have the tactical sense to (try to) take advantage of the opportunities and the ‘game’ opened up by experimentation. For full participation necessarily implies trying to influence the deliberations, by multiplying the access channels to the local selection committees. This acute sense of tactics is evident in this HR manager, who is able to mobilise other colleagues in the actual development of her idea:

The idea I submitted was made into the subject of a dissertation by a prevention technician. Mobilised by his interest in the idea, he worked hard to have it prototyped. We worked together with a small start-up and then the Labs. The prevention technician and the start-up put all their energy into helping us with the development. The funny thing is that even though the people above me were not very interested in it, for more or less justified reasons, all of a sudden, they want me to present the prototype to the management committee. (Pascale)

There are therefore two ‘regimes’ in participation: the first, which we will call hindered self-management (autogestionnaire entravé) (close to N. Alter’s managerial-dogmatic configuration, but with more room for manoeuvre), consists in showing a minimum interest in the implementation of the mechanism, by putting forward an idea and delegating one’s rights to deliberate —no doubt, by default— because the possibilities for deliberation offered by the local context are very limited from the outset. The second, close to the self-management configuration, consists in mobilising resources and a tactical sense to influence the deliberations and thus the decisions. However, this does not presuppose implementation of the ideas submitted: not all suggestions made by the actors of ordinary innovation are institutionalised.

4.2. Conditions of deliberation

The logic of decentralisation, inscribed in certain principles of participation systems (submission of ideas, votes, comments), clashes with the recentralising management logic, which is also inscribed in the principles of participation (committees, juries, capacity of the entities concerned to lend the means to develop the chosen ideas, whether in terms of financial resources or of time allocated to competent people). As we described in section 3, the path of an ‘idea’, from its submission to the moment of its completion (prototyping, deployment follow-up) is long, supervised and, hence, requires support from the decision-making bodies. This is why possessing the relevant capital to actively engage in the deliberation around ‘one’s’ idea is not enough to ‘make it happen’. An examination of the collected data shows, in particular, the importance of having support within the decision-making bodies.

This support may come from the management of the entity where the suggestion was made, as in the case of this HR documentation manager, who is also in a position (within the entity) that enables her to develop her ideas autonomously:

Because in fact, in general, when I have had ideas in the context of my work, I have implemented them, alone or with the support of my superiors. Besides, I have saved the company a lot of money with my ideas. […] But when we put forward ideas that we don’t implement ourselves, at the level of our management, it seems difficult to make them prosper. (Martine)

Most often, however, this support is provided by ‘facilitators’ who have been legitimised by the organisation and who have recognised technical skills in the field in which the innovation is suggested. These facilitators, who are expert senior managers, are able to assess the contributions and cost/benefit ratio of these suggestions and to produce relevant arguments, expressed in terms that can be discussed collectively within legitimate deliberation forums, particularly within the management committees of the concerned divisions. This is especially true in the case of the wall of ideas: given the heterogeneity of the ideas expressed, the selection committees cannot possess all the skills required to understand all of them with the same acuity and to evaluate them objectively. Having the support of a facilitator on a committee can make the difference as regards those ideas which the committee members have no expertise to handle.

4.3. What liberation from work?

In the case of hindered self-management configurations, the minimal involvement in the participation mechanisms and the low level of intervention in the deliberation processes suggest that the employees concerned are not so much seeking to change their activity –liberation from work– as to make their current skills visible, beyond those associated with their position in the organisation, or potential solutions to the problems they encounter. Participating in experiments is a way of making a sober contribution, within the framework of formal procedures, without departing too much from their professional culture. In this way, they show their desire to remain within the norm as it evolves but do not envisage changing levels or departments. If their idea is not developed by the company, the resulting disappointment may be tempered by peer approval, marked by a significant number of votes and comments.

This is not the case for employees who engage in self-management configurations. In their case, active participation, using their room for manoeuvre and trying to influence decision-making are all part of the recognition perspective, but in a different sense: these actors of innovation seek to be recognised as being capable of accomplishing other functions, thus escaping the frameworks set by their job description and their hierarchical position. It is in this sense that involvement in participation mechanisms can be a source of liberation from work: acting to try to redirect the prospects for professional development and accumulating evidence of an aptitude that is at once strategic –putting forward the relevant idea at the right time–, tactical –knowing how to identify and contact specialists–, and managerial –knowing how to organise effectively the different professional groups required to implement the idea. These employees are able to surround themselves with people who have the right skills to develop their ideas.

In the case of challenges, the ideas put forward correspond to a specific theme and the members of the jury are competent to discuss them. By proposing these ideas, the employees signal themselves to managers who are capable of improving their activity. This quest for visibility is driven by the hope of giving meaning to their work (‘a breath of fresh air’) or of influencing the evolution of their professional activity, as this network manager explains to us:

These are use cases that I was planning to study in more detail to show that I can develop my idea. […] I wanted to use the challenge to find the resources to develop this idea and move on to new projects. (Louise)

Empirically, this configuration concerns employees with a marginalised position within the organisation or their sector, as well as employees who are ‘trapped’ in activities that are indispensable but with no future. This is the case of a technician employed in a foreign subsidiary, the only one who knows how to manage and maintain a technologically outdated piece of equipment which the company does not plan to replace in the short term. And if he takes part in the challenge, it is in the hope of enrolling in a training course that will open up new opportunities for him in terms of professional development.

Sometimes this desire to change activity is done with the aim of taking on board an entire team for new projects. This is the case of an expert in a foreign entity who provides technical and operational solutions to partners in the various countries where the multinational is present. In this case, the members of his team, working together and supported by their manager, organised themselves to divide the tasks differently and free up the time of the person who was trying to develop an idea likely to bring about a change in their activity.

Conclusion

In sum, the principles of these two participation systems are ambiguous: while they encourage access to collective deliberation, which promises to liberate work, the idea selection protocol restricts decision-making to a circle of co-opted managers and experts. Despite this, these principles introduce, if only temporarily, room for manoeuvre that is taken up by a proportion of employees: several thousand, as we indicated in section 3.1. Among these, only a fraction of the employees has access to a form of deliberation by appropriating the rules of the game (making others vote and comment, relying on facilitators). If they manage to do so, it is first of all thanks to their social and relational capital, which enables them to pass a first test, by proving the relevance of their suggestion (broad ‘popular’ approval) and by developing their tactical sense: their capacity to identify and use the support of experts, skilfully chosen, even outside their entity. These facilitators are likely to combine, within the same field of activity, professional and managerial logics, so that the deliberation goes beyond the framework of their entity. When this capital is lacking, some employees manage to develop their idea, because of their position and the means at their disposal, within the framework of their projects. Others manage to realise their ideas because they have a favourable local environment where spaces for deliberation are provided and where they can rely, possibly, on experienced facilitators from their entity: deliberation is then local.

Furthermore, the empirical configurations show that by appropriating access to deliberations and decision-making, some employees hope to be recognised beyond their current job positions. One can only speak of the liberation of work in the limited sense of a potential expansion of professional opportunities. Of course, a more elaborate form of work liberation could be seen in the fact that individual departments could have a high degree of autonomy (committees, jury) to select and develop innovations (decentralisation). But this liberation only concerns the managers who propose these challenges or walls of ideas and the experts they co-opt. Moreover, this decentralisation is strongly constrained by the recentralising will of the entities with the technical expertise that gives them, in principle, the capacity to develop these ideas, but which are often subject to the constraints of ‘roadmaps’ and pre-existing management indicators.

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