From the analysis of labor relations to the theory of social regulation

Jean-Daniel Reynaud interviewed by Éric Pezet and Pierre Louart

Today as in the 1950s, a doctrine exists in France according to which the labor relations formalized by industry or company agreements are merely problems of law. However useful this doctrine may be for settling differences, does it correspond to reality when, as now, these problems of labor relations are also a matter of local regulation? Born out of the study of labor relations and negotiations, the theory of social regulation worked out by the sociologist Jean Daniel Reynaud in the 1980s claims to be a theory about the specificity of rules that should always be understood by asking where they come from, where they are heading, and who experiences, supports and changes them. This theory has enabled many politicians and union leaders to better delimit the work relationship itself and unravel the knot of collective actions in firms. It provides social scientists with an original paradigm for deciphering a large number of situations.
 

OVERLOOKED

The strategy of an international environmental NGO: Linking biology and management, public actions and competition

Tiphaine Gaudefroy de Mombynes and Laurent Mermet

Nongovernmental organizations are neither companies nor public agencies. They play precise roles in pursuing private and collective interests, especially in environmental matters. To do this, they have to solve problems related to two distinct fields of research. The first is public management of the environment, the major problem here being NGOs’ strategies for intervening in society, politics and the economy in order to attain the environmental objectives they have set. The second is the management of organizations, the issue here being the specific managerial problems encountered by NGOs as they manage their growth and succeed in the competition in their branch of activity.
 

When states unite: From the generation of fathers to the generation of founding brothers

Hervé Dumez

Valéry said that the present cannot be deduced. So what is history good for? To spawn ideas, and that alone; but that is already considerable. Contemporaries, like ourselves, of European construction tend to mainly see the pettiness, meanness, haggling compromises and quarrels of precedence between big and small countries. Recalling how the United States were constituted helps us relativize this view. Behind the visible facade, which sparks little enthusiasm, major events are taking place in Europe. Desperately looking for an Adams, Jefferson and Washington…
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

OVERLOOKED

Professionalizing nonprofit organizations: The volunteer staff of the French Federation of Equitation

Denis Bernardeau Moreau

During a period characterized by a loss of bearings, nonprofit organizations, given their function of creating social bonds, might meet the needs of persons who want to reappropriate individual and collective identities. However the nonprofit world is in the throes of a deep crisis. As such organizations evolve toward a professional form close to the model of companies, the prevailing model comes undone, based as it is on volunteers and amateurs who declare their devotion to the altruistic values of abnegation. This evolution lies at the center of this analysis of the conditions in the Fédération Française d’Équitation that have given rise to a new voluntary but more professional and more individualistic model of involvement.

The expert’s power reviewed: France Télécom’s technicians between public service and customer satisfaction

Franck Cochoy and Ivan Boissières

While looking at changes in France Télécom, especially at those involving the supervisory staff, a peculiar situation for the sociology of organizations was observed: experts did not use the strategic opportunities provided by their know-how, not even in a context that left them with an overall feeling of dissatisfaction. The technicians’ commitment to the public service and their machines can account for this situation. But by reintroducing techniques and culture into behavior, the question of the expert’s power in network firms can be raised differently. Horizontal processes of cooperation can be seen that the new information and communication technology reinforces. More importantly, technicians can be observed interacting with other technicians who are equal in terms of expertise and with whom they share common values .

OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES

The growth and decline of financial participation in the fruits of labor during the 19th century: A history lesson on a controversial pay system

Christophe Estay

In France, the 20th century marked a rupture in the way wage-earners participated in the fruits of their labor. Whereas most countries were letting companies set up alternative pay schemes, France instituted, in the early 1960s, an obligation to have wage-earners partake of the fruits of economic growth. The objective was to find a “third path between capitalism and socialism”. In the 19th century already, the development of schemes of participation in the fruits of labor were mainly motivated by employers’ intention to improve living standards for wage-earners and their hope of thus reducing social grievances thanks to the converging interests of workers and bosses. 

From slaughterhouses to the assembly line: Inventing assembly-line work in Chicago and Detroit

Jean-Louis Peaucelle

High wages and high productivity thanks to workers’ efforts, mechanization and an exacting management of flows, such were the ingredients of industrial and economic progress during the 20th century. The assembly line technically solved problems related to mass production. Experiments with it were conducted in the American food industry, in particular on the processes of cutting up and packing meat in the Chicago slaughterhouses in the mid-19th century. Overlooking this industry’s role, the history of techniques declares that the assembly line was invented in 1913 at the Ford plant in Detroit. Nonetheless, the slaughterhouses were the first place that handled problems of mass production — what other industries would have to do later on… by borrowing previously experimented solutions.