This note presents the results of a study devised to improve our understanding of the different practices that aim to encourage employees to be more autonomous in professional communities.

The objective of this note is to identify emerging practices to organize work and manage skills in factories that have successfully modernized their production system.

Futures of Industry and Work (FIT²) Chair at Mines ParisTech

This publication is the result of a journey to visit a sample of Italian companies, starting in 2014 and ending in spring 2016.

This note is the synthesis of a series of meetings we did in 2016 and 2017 organized by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the Friedrich- Ebert Foundation and La Fabrique de l’industrie.

Consensus is growing that business performance can be increased by improving employees’ quality of work life (QWL) through granting them greater autonomy in their work (Bourdu, Péretié and Richer, 2016a). However, this management assumption still lacks statistical proof.

This Note takes the work further and looks at the resilience of these companies, in other words their capacity to stand up to a crisis, sometimes even using it as a springboard to bounce back stronger.

Psychosocial risks, work-related stress, occupational health, quality of working life (QWL), wellbeing and happiness at work. Studies of life at work employ a strikingly wide range of terms (covering a variety of visions), whether in companies, during social negotiations, in public and media debates, even in the academic sphere.

Industrial processes, value chains and business models are about to undergo a profound transformation, mostly due to the integration of digital technologies.

The precautionary principle is sometimes accused of creating an obstacle to innovation development, or even industrial activity. It is not so much its legal application that can pose problems for companies, as the erroneous invocation of the principle by groups opposed to technologies, new or otherwise, and its inappropriate application.