Employability and Industrial Mutations

12Digital Technologies as a Lever for Developing the Employability of Middle Managers

The Covid health crisis in the spring of 2020 has led to an exponential development of teleworking practices. Digital technologies became central after a few days of confinement and have modified management practices¹. The employability of managers depends more and more on their ability to master, integrate and develop these digital technologies in their managerial activity. Beyond technological skills, it is ultimately to develop their ability to mobilize technology to respond to various and complex managerial situations. The disappearance of certain managerial activities, such as face-to-face activities in our example of the Covid crisis, requires even more in-depth reflection on the employability of these managers. It is a question of anticipating future needs, both organizational and individual, and thinking about how to maintain the value of the middle manager on the labor market (De Grip et al. 2004).

In the academic and practitioner literature, the middle manager appears to be a key player in the development of the employability of his or her team members. But little research has been done on the employability of this type of manager. The latter must adapt to increasingly contradictory and unpredictable situations (Mintzberg 2006; Tengblad 2006). In addition, they must integrate an exponential number of technologies, especially since the arrival of digital technology. How can digital ...