This book is exciting!

It is great to see the collective skills built entirely towards the goal of offering a real added value to the reader!

Collective skills are built on three complementary elements. Building on the work of my colleagues and friends, Christian Defélix and Pierre-Yves Sanséau (2017)¹, as well as the path initiated by Didier Retour, I will highlight that collective skills require:

• – foundations (rules on how we work, how we collaborate, who does what? etc.);
• – bricks (skills specific to each individual);
• – and cement (cooperation, mutual assistance, subjective commitment, often the pleasure to work together).

Cultivated in the best of ways, collective skills create works that each individual, taken in isolation, would have been unable to produce. With collective skills, the whole is often, by far, greater than the sum of the parts…

This book is a perfect illustration of that.

While reading Skills Management, one immediately perceives the quality of foundations that have been built. All chapters offer a clarity of writing that allows for a clear and detailed explanation of ideas, arguments and concepts. There is no doubt that this clarity has been achieved through the tireless work of readings and re-readings. All chapters also share the same goal in explaining the conceptual bases of their approach. Concepts are presented and explained. They are discussed. Thus, they allow us to pose arguments and to advance knowledge. The chapters also offer rich and interesting empirical data. The invested grounds have all been with a clear concern to “give voice” to the employees encountered, in order to understand the way in which they perceive, live and develop their skills. And what to say of the rigor which has necessarily been required to produce this publication at the desired time!

What is striking is the quality of the individual skills of each of the authors who have been placed at the service of these collective skills. This book investigates the topic of skills in areas which are all renewed and at the cutting edge of current reflections:

• – mentoring;
• – soft skills (engineers);
• – emotional skills (police officers);
• – social business responsibility;
• – shared leadership at the hospital, etc.

A more conceptual chapter proposes them to pass on, in SMEs, from Human Resource Management to Management of Business Resources, entrepreneurial skills that employees can develop in SMEs and that allow them to articulate with the skills of the SME manager and thus promote company development.

Finally, one chapter offers a more critical perspective by underlying that the flexibility of the workforce and skills are often opposed and that companies must choose one or the other.

This book thus appears as the worthy heir of the existing literature on competence management. Its wealth allows us to articulate conceptual debates of quality, in-depth empirical investigations and fruitful critical perspectives. Depending on their tastes and interests, readers can therefore choose to start reading the chapters that please them the most… This choice may even be a little difficult for them…

Finally, for the third element of the collective competence, it is evident that a strong cement holds this collective work together. We can guess the multiple meetings and the insightful exchanges which enabled its construction. After reading this book, we can say that we would have liked to be a member of this team and to have shared this adventure!

Finally, we thank the authors and the coordinators – who have undoubtedly played a major role in the construction of these collective skills and the success of this collective work – for giving us this book, this renewed perspective on skills management and this demonstration of the strength of collective skills.

Thank you all and happy reading!

Ewan OIRY

ESG-UQAM

October 2018