Understanding organizational paths: organizing and strategizing tension in a Fab organization

The objective of this research is both to propose a framework to reveal and analyze the organizational paths of institutions and companies and to implement this framework to produce knowledge about Fab organizations. The organizational path, inspired of the notion of the career path, appears to be of particular interest to reveal and understand organizational development, a goal of Activity-Centered Ergonomics. We conducted a research-intervention in a Fab organization with the aims of co-constructing the organizational trajectory of the company with workers and of “experiencing it”. Here we identify the main moments in the transformation of the organization corresponding to specific organizational forms, as well as the close interrelation between the service offered machines and space, and a strong need for strategizing, organization of work, and organizing. This questions the paradox of some Fab organizations – bound between a fantasy of autonomy and a need of control – and opens up to a methodological and theoretical research agenda. This agenda involves the exploration of the organizational path as it is articulated in actual work as an instrument of discussion spaces and their potential to support the work of organizing and strategizing.