Our project aims at deepening the understanding of the way skills evolve when private firms and public administrations change their organisations or their equipment in Information and Communication Technologies.

Our research perspective is novel as we intend to assess jointly the role of training, hiring and firing and outside contracting in the precesses of skill development, taking into account interactions between employers and employees. In particular, we will take into account the fact that reorganisation choices are partly endogenous, depending on workforce characteristics. We will also take into account the fact that employees play an active role in the evolution of their competencies.

We will mobilise economic and sociological approaches, and consolidate our analysis by vayring the institutional context throught comparisons between the private anc public sectors and between France and Germany.

The 2006 wave of the matched employer/employee survey on Organisational Changes and Computerization (C.O.I), on which quantitative as well as qualitative research will rest, will be central in the coordination of our research.