No abstract

L’article, centré sur les orientations de rôle de nouveaux cadres de l’Action Sociale, prolonge et complète le modèle de la proactivité appliquée aux processus de socialisation organisationnelle. Ce modèle reconnaît au sujet la capacité à agir sur son environnement de travail, à en interpréter les prescriptions; l’orientation de rôle est, dans cette perspective, dépendante des rapports des sujets aux exigences de la tâche, de l’organisation et à celles de son propre développement. Les auteurs estiment qu’elle est également placée sous l’influence de visées et d’engagements afférents aux milieux et activités de socialisation en dehors du travail. Ainsi l’étude empirique qualitative met-elle en évidence les variabilités interindividuelles des modes d’accomplissement du rôle managérial. Elle souligne aussi la nécessité d’une prise en compte de la pluralité des ancrages familiaux, personnels et sociaux des sujets pour rendre intelligibles les processus psychologiques à l’oeuvre dans l’orientation de rôle au cours de la transition professionnelle.This article examines the role orientations of new managers working in the Social Action field who are in an occupational transition phase. It extends and broadens the proactivity model developed in writings on organizational socialization. The latter is viewed as an interactive process which depends not only on the organization’s initiatives but also on the capacities of subjects to “clarify,” direct, develop their role and transform the norms of the organization (Morrison, 1993; Nicholson, 1984). Thus, socialization cannot be reduced to the mere result of pressure in the workplace. Our theoretical approach maintains that although role orientation is based on the subjects’ relations with task requirements and the rules and norms of the organization, it is influenced by the aims and commitments related to the socialization environments and activities of these individuals outside work.The qualitative empirical study presented here focuses on 15 new managers in the Social Action field (a social worker, special-education teachers, a socio-cultural group leader) who have, for 7 to 10 months, been performing managerial duties for the first time in their careers. These subjects underwent semi-structured interviews based on open-ended questions, a number of which dealt with role orientation. Operationally, the latter is characterized by the following indicators: value attached to duties, self-assignment of work objectives, operations related to activity completion or non completion, the aims of the action, time management of work activities, and relations with others inside and outside the workplace.The corpus established through a complete retranscription of the in-depth semi-structured interviews was processed in two ways: through a computerized lexical discourse analysis, using ALCESTE software, and through a standard theme-based content analysis.The results highlight inter-individual variabilities in the way the managerial role is performed.The lexical analysis using ALCESTE bro...