Sociology of projects and products - 4GUP11B5

Goal(s)

The engineer has to face two challenges:

• to integrate into an organization by project, to adopt good attitudes, to participate to the decisions, to take responsibility for a project
• to ensure that the products and services will meet uses, the needs or desires of potential customers.
  The engineer needs tools to understand how to behave in project organizations and to understand organizational constraints and informal rules.
  He needs tools to understand how customers use technological innovations, and how technical objects transform social life.

Content(s)

Content
The course is divided into two parts, with two different issues

1. The organization by project (Sociology of organizations), 18 hours
This part will address the sociological analysis of the organization by project
How decisions are made in the project (choice of functionality, choice of technical solution...)? What are the usual failures of the decision-making process? How to organize to make better decisions? How to increase the reactivity and avoid irreversible decisions?
Project devices have a managerial dimension. What are the drivers for motivation in a project? How to maintain the mobilization of stakeholders throughout the project? Why projects always face crises?
The project is an area of confrontation between occupational groups (different technical domains, engineers, technicians, workers) : how their knowledge and their values interact in the project? How better defend yours goal in the negotiations with other occupational groups?
The project mobilizes often different companies: how to work on the long term with partners? How to go beyond the conflict of economic interests?

2. Sociology of technics and consumption practices (18 hours)
This teaching is designed to familiarize the students with the reasoning and the tools of the sociology of technics and the sociology of consumption.
How does technology change our society? How do changes in society create new needs that encourage technical innovations?
How to understand consumers, their needs, their desires, their identity issues. How innovators creating new needs? How the products involved our identity?
How can products be integrated in practices (recreation, daily life and work...)? How can we better understand their uses?

There are no prerequisite. Bases in Sociology of work and organizations (first year course) can facilitate the acquisition of reasoning and concepts.