The paradoxes of externalization strategy in a safety critical industry.

Léna Masson (1) , Julienne Brabet (1)

1 IRG - Institut de Recherche en Gestion

How is the outsourcing of maintenance activities managed in the safety critical industries? What are the kind of difficulties created in this context and how can they be overcome? These are the questions we will try to answer in this article. We have built on an existing body of literature concerning safety critical industries, subcontracting, and joint regulation methods. We have had the opportunity to conduct in-depth empirical research inside the headquarters and the industrial plants of a large energy company. We analyze the ways in which safety imposes strong top-down procedures, while the local laws forbid direct management by the energy company of the subcontractors' employees; we observed some discrepancies between the official rules and the realities of field work that a more systematic investment in developing joint regulation may allow to minimize.

Mots clés: subcontracting; safety critical organization; control-based management; joint regulation; discussion spaces

Domaines: Gestion et management

Léna Masson, Julienne Brabet. The paradoxes of externalization strategy in a safety critical industry.. 18th EURAM Annual Conference, Jun 2018, Reykjavik, Iceland. ⟨hal-01765294⟩