Do French Managers Know their Companies? Lessons from the REPONSE Survey

Abstract

This article explores the potential pitfalls of using surveys on organisational practices, firms technological choices, and workplace relations. Using a generic methodology, one can estimate the degree of truthfulness or consistency of responding executives working in different local units of a single enterprise. Applied to the French REPONSE survey in regard to the enterprises general characteristics, the methodology suggests that (1) executives usually give rather consistent answers to a question handled separately from the others, and (2) that their answers are all the more specific as the questions are simple and fall within the respondents sphere of competency. However, responses to questions on social relations and trade-union representation in the firm are less reliable. Allowing for executives errors, we are led to substantially revise both the level and the rate of change of a number of variables, particularly the weights of different employees unions in firms.Organizational Change, Workplace Relations, Survey Methods