The scene takes place during a board meeting of a large financial institution. For an hour, a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) presentation details the importance of taking global warming into account. “At the end, a decision was made, says Henri Proglio, the ex-CEO of Veolia and EDF. It was to remove the plastic cups. I asked the question: “Do you really believe that Is this going to have an impact?” I was told: “Ah, you’re still giving us your number”.
This testimony is taken from the book totalitarian management (Albin Michel), published by Violaine des Courières, journalist at Marianne. The author, herself an executive of a communication agency in her first life, immersed herself for five years in the meanders of French capitalism. What she discovered there is enough to seize the reader: a world of chiaroscuro, where the values displayed correspond little to fashionable practices. His thesis? The world of large French companies has gradually come to conform to the standards of the business Anglo-Saxon, where short-term profit is a cardinal principle. No matter the consequences, you have to ‘perform’ immediately.
The phenomenon that best illustrates these new practices is undoubtedly that of “ranking”. Violaine de Courières describes how, in several French multinationals, some of which are listed on the CAC 40, employees are cataloged in different categories by their managers. Impossible to properly classify everyone: it is necessary to establish a hierarchy with a few strong links but also and above all a quota of “weak links”. Those with the lowest ratings are gradually pushed out. This practice being prohibited since a decision of the Court of Cassation in 2013, companies tack and evoke “statistics” of an informative nature, in order to “[s’]to ensure that there would be no inequity”, as the management of one of these groups asserts. now all employees are under pressure. In this hushed universe, violence never appears in its rawness. It always wants to be hidden behind pretexts, like the Newspeak that one uses to euphemize one’s intentions. not dismiss employees, but “boost the fluidity” of the company or, as at Orpea, “optimize the payroll”.
German counter model
In support of her demonstration, the author brings in prestigious witnesses, such as Henri Proglio, who evokes “a dictatorship of finance and the short term”. The former big boss tells how he himself was placed under pressure from his shareholders, through the fluctuation of the stock market price of his companies. “It’s as if I were a long-distance runner with, always on me, the measure of my tension. There is enough to develop an addiction”, he says. Henri Lachmann, the former CEO of Schneider Electric, world leader in energy, mocks the “totalitarian drift” caused by investment funds, these shareholders who “do not care about the companies in which they invest” and seek profit the most. faster.
Far from advocating decline, Violaine des Courières describes the counter-model, that of “Rhenish capitalism”, attentive to long-term issues and social dialogue. In Germany, the participation of trade unions in the company’s strategic decisions does not harm their performance. And this without “ranking”.