La professionnalisation : une nouvelle approche de la GPEC

With the passing of a law on January 18, 2005, the obligation to negotiate manpower planning launched a new set of practices. Although these practices are not well stabilized, they all aim to enable firms to adapt their human resources to their needs – both qualitatively and quantitatively – with regards to the evolutions of their environment. However, it appears that in some cases, namely in that of major technological evolutions, the traditional methods and tools of manpower planning do not enable firms to develop the competences they need. This failure is due to the traditional framework of manpower planning itself which focuses on the firm and ignores the social construction of occupations. As we show, with the case of IT and more specifically with website management, this construction takes place in a broader arena than that of the organization. Professionalization challenges traditional occupations and emerging ones which seek legitimacy. Grounding on the theory of Andrew Abbott, an American sociologist, we conclude that it is necessary to analyze not only the dynamics within occupations but also between them. Moreover, the focus shouldn't be limited to an organizational level, but also include a focus on the competition between occupations at a macro level. To do so, we suggest including a transversal perspective and a focus on the dynamics of occupation to the vertical and conservative approach of the manpower planning.