The impact of the use of subcontracting on organizational reliability and safety

Abstract : Subcontracting has become very widespread in contemporary socio-technical systems. It takes many forms and leads us to think again about the nature of the workforce. This article takes a new look at organizational boundaries in terms of the concept of businesses that are extended through subcontracting and its implications for safety culture. First we present a comprehensive, state of the art typology of the current forms of subcontracting, which have been developed to meet the needs of productive organizations. Then we focus on the effects of this type of indirect management on the effectiveness and reliability of organizations and more specifically, the workforce