Abstract

This description, drawn from a future dissertation, inquires into the conditions for successfully reorganizing the function “Personnel” in a multinational group. The goal of this reorganization was to cut the costs of the Personnel administration (where the author holds a white-collar job) by setting up a Center of Shared Services in charge of pay and the administrative management of the workforce. The decision, recommended by international consultants, was supposed to rapidly reduce costs. This ethnographic study is based on documents used in the firm. The description of stages in the implementation process of the proposed plan sheds light on: the difficulties and troubles encountered, the forms of adaptation by persons in the field, and the attempts to find a new - viable - organizational equilibrium.