Dynamics of Cooperation Between Professional Groups : The Case of Complex Tasks in High Risks Organization

This communication aims at explaining the dynamics of cooperation between various professional groups for the resolution of complex tasks which require skills distributed in various segments of the organization. The communication analyze organizations created by the actors to realize complex tasks and the type of skills and links created in these temporary forms. It will highlight the organizational forms created by actors of different groups professionals and the logics and social dynamics (trust, recognition, gift) which favor their cooperation.
Examples stemming from the realization of interventions of maintenance within a complex and high risks organization will be mobilized.

The management of the organization imposes the construction of a structure project and the actors create other forms of organization within this structure to favor their cooperation. If technical competences are essential to project’s success, the construction of a network which one can mobilize for putting in relation the relevant actors according to the situation seems essential in practice. The construction and the remaining of this network rest on several elements: they lean on relational skills; its solidity is put to the test by the exchanges, gifts and recognitions which take place between its members; they join in a long time and lean on collective learnings.

The communication is built in three phases. At first, it highlights how the actors acquire the technical skills within their respective professional group and the underlying social processes in this acquisition. Secondly, the communication will analyze the modalities of meeting of these various actors in the same project and will highlight the temporary organizations invented by them to work together, as well as the social dynamics which live in them. Finally, in a last time, the communication will attempt to show how the social skills and the created links are reinvested for a later project.