Le manager face aux paradoxes du changement. Le rôle de la capabilité négative

Change produces uncertainty and paradoxes. Managers have for mission to manage them. Management manuals and articles recommend to reduce uncertainty and elucidate paradoxes, mobilizing a capability called positive. This article explores another way to manage change, through the underrated concept of negative capability, i.e. an ability to remain in doubts and uncertainty (Keats, 1970). From an ethnography, we identified two opposite cases of managers whom, facing a similar situation, in their attitudes and in their practices, mobilize different capabilities, positive or negative, in the context of a change project. We propose a grid of analysis to characterize these two types of capabilities. Through this concept of negative capability, we encourage to reconsider, to rehabilitate even, uncertainty in organizations, by showing that it is not necessarily to minimize, but rather to ?manage?.