Rapport au travail et dynamique de transformation du métier d'ingénieur dans le contexte algérien: le cas de l'entreprise Sonatrach

The subject of this study is the dynamic of transformation in the field of engineering in Algeria. It is based on theoretical approaches from the sociology of professional groups and combines quantitative with qualitative methods. Using data gathered with the help of a questionnaire and in-depth interviews at Sonatrach, Algeria’s largest company, the goal of my study is to shed light upon the factors that come into play at the individual, organizational, and societal level in the professional practices of two generations of engineers. The first generation build the large infrastructure projects of the postindependence period, whereas the second arrived on the job market at the end of the 1980s, a period of crisis, and suffered from the downturn in the economic cycle. Business practices consist in activities at work, other everyday activities, relationships with others and finally job satisfaction. These were the focal points in my effort to explain the relation of job satisfaction in the engineers of the study group. I highlighted the effect of one’s place in the hierarchy and the kinds of duties carried out. There is satisfaction in working for and belonging to a prestigious company. Younger engineers also obtain satisfaction from technical know-how. Older engineers, more influenced by nationalist ideology, emphasized building the country, but also selfrealization and loyalty to the company. An engineer’s relation to the job can also change over time with regard to career development. In a second section, I documented the processes of integration and of mobility within the company. Professional trajectories are governed by policies and management procedures that define their modalities, yet they are equally subject to opportunities and informal practices that play an equally important role in determining the shape of careers. Finally, the relation to work is influenced by factors outside the company itself. In this third part of the study, I analyse the transformations of the educational system and their impact on the certification of engineers, the economic crisis and its effect in terms of joblessness and job insecurity, and finally the rise of religious discourse and its manifestations among engineers. These factors connected to the societal context modify some representations and affect the attitudes and behaviors both at work and toward work. My research shows that the relation to work, articulates, in a complex composition, individual trajectories and collective histories lived in environments in flux. The practice of a profession is connected to various contexts of socialization that individuals go through. In the Algerian example, it is at the point of contact between education and technical training that show little responsiveness to the economic operator’s changing needs that it is supposed to satisfy, a company that it is bureaucratic in its structure and functioning in which contravening regulations can become a principle of management, and finally, a societal context oscillating between modernity and tradition. As for this societal context, religious movements have reinterpreted as action in society. Engineers who were initially meant to carry out a development mission and considered as vectors of modernity thereby see their status diminished and there is a crisis in the profession, which is experienced differently, from one generation to the next.

Keyphrases: Sonatrach