Simuler les dynamiques organisationnelles pour concevoir l’organisation. Comment retisser les liens entre stratégie, organisation et travail ?

Simulation in social sciences entrenches itself in research traditions whose disciplinary type and researcher style color its purpose. For some, the technology to be applied, for others the techniques that encourage debate - the possibilities are multifaceted. In this paper, we present an original way of mobilizing simulation, in a situation of collaborative research in the field of management sciences. After discussing the difference between dialogical investigation and the organizational design and dynamic of organizations approach, we show how organisational simulation can be used to articulate a company’s strategic reasoning, a new organizational design and deployment, and the activity of actors in the field. In so doing, we explore the possibility of operating improved integration between strategic decisions taken by high-level managers, the choices made by middle management concerning the deployment strategy, and how the activity is performed and experienced by the workers (intellectual in this case) who are responsible for it. At a time when we are reflecting upon its invisibility (Gomez, 2013), we thus discuss possible ways of bringing work back into the strategic decision-making and organizational design process in large companies.