51

This article aims to clarify the nature of the work of decision-making at the level of executive management in so-called hypermodern organizations. The focus is on short-term performance objectives, complexification of the organization, permanent reporting, instrumental rationalization, etc., and the following two questions are addressed. In this type of organization, is the executive manager’s mission of “managing decision-making” still possible in view of the observed rarefaction of managerial time for sharing a vision, deciding as a team? Faced with the internal discourse on management which does not take account of reality and trivializes paradoxes, is it possible for them to think about the decisions that must be taken, and to support the middle management in bearing responsibility for these decisions, while managing the contradictions linked to their implementation, following up the effects of the decisions, and evaluating them? This article is based on an account of intervention involving the analysis of the practice of decision-making by a group of executive managers in a large French company in the public sector. It is within the economic context of engaging in European competition, increasing complexity in the company’s organization, and a “culture of results in all services.” This intervention was conceived as a means for supporting the positions and practices of the decision-making processes of the executive managers, and as an action-research instrument for helping the group of executive managers, actors of the Research Department and Executive Management, to reconsider the limitations of the company’s current discourse on the notion of responsibility and decision-making and the basic role of the executive managers.