"Grands projets" - organisation and urgency

When producing a new car, a process that can take up to six years, why are all the major decisions taken in an urgent rush ? Jean-Claude Moisdon studies this question in the light of his long experience of working with the teams responsible for resolving the conflicts between the different professional groups involved. Technicians appear to wait for the last minute to suddenly take their differences of opinion up the hierarchical ladder to their superiors, last minute choices then end up being made according to economic or budgetary criteria rather than technical ones. So urgency becomes an "organisational link" allowing two contradictory logics to coexist : a conviviality at the lower level on the one hand and arbitrary conflicts between the bosses on the other.