Organization and management system: In search of a new integration

This article constitutes a version of Professor Philippe Zarifian's paper, presented under the same title at the International Workshop ‘Where do organizations go to?’, promoted (sponsored) by the Departamento de Engenharia de Produção of the Escola Politécnica of the Universidade de São Paulo, in August 1994. The author is Research Director at the LATTS/ENPC (Laboratoire Techniques, Territories et Sociétés, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées) and Full Professor at the Université de Marne la Vallée. The paper discusses the management systems of industrial firms, particularly those related to financial management, and the new needs required by the rise and adoption of new models of production organization. Considering that the performance characteristics of the industrial firms have been submitted to radical changes, the author portrays a precise picture of these transformations, by showing that traditional management systems – based on analytical accountancy and suitable to the classic logic of organization – do not fit well into the new performance requirements of the type of organization. The author's original contribution arises from the association between organization and management, by emphasizing the necessity of developing a new integration between organization strucutre and management system.