N° 157 - Septembre 2024

Story of a gradual decline of maintenance skills in a high-risk organization (1980-2020)

By Léna Masson and Anne Dietrich
University of Lille – IAE Lille University School of Management

In industry, maintenance work, which is deemed non-strategic, is widely subcontracted. While these activities are essential to maintaining the reliability of high-risk organisations, the fact that they are subcontracted is frequently blamed for industrial disasters. In the short term, this leads to financial gains, but also to adverse effects, especially in terms of skills. An in-depth, longitudinal, and multi-level case study within the highrisk business line of a major government-owned company enables us to map out the skills-loss process, to identify the factors behind it, and to inform the analysis of the relationship between inter-organisational control mechanisms and the skills that are required to perform the outsourced activities.

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