Y-a-t-il convergence de l'engagement des salariés du secteur privé et des agents de la fonction publique d'État face aux changements organisationnels ?

Using a linked employer-employee survey on computerisation and organisational change (COI), we compare the effects of organisational changes on the evolution of employee commitment in public and private sector organisations. Our main finding is that of a non-convergence between the two sectors. Confronted with organisational changes, civil servants express a declining involvement whereas in the private sector these changes are associated with the development or at least the maintenance of work involvement. Furthermore, private sector employees report that their feeling of fair work recognition decreases with the intensity of computer changes and deteriorates when changes in management tools reach a high level, but these effects are weakened by the joint presence of changes in both areas. It is almost the opposite that is observed in the public sector, with a negative effect of managerial changes that is lessened when their intensity grows and a combination of changes in both areas that strengthens most of the time the perception of an effort-reward imbalance. These results hold if we take into account both the voluntary selection of employees in each sector and the labour force turnover observed in the private sector. We finally show that the implementation of performance pay during the period of changes is not the source of the observed differences between the two sectors.