Power can be used as a way to create fruitful opportunities for scientific agendas. Power also offers an analytical tool to make sense of social phenomena. This does not imply that power theory building only may derive heuristic benefits using it. The paper concludes by a series of still open...

Analyse du phénomène de la contrainte "douce" exercée par l'entreprise sur ses cadres et la résistance que certains d'entre eux y opposent, avec des témoignages

The paper is based on intensive longitudinal field research. It suggests an interpretative model of territorial governement in France. Relations between national and local authorities as well as policy-making processes suggest that the centralized state has face a major decline of its hegemony...

Why do social scientists give less and less attention to policies and policy-making as a specific domain for inquiry while they use empirical contexts of policies and policy-making as empirical data sources and tests of broader theories about society and politics? The paper relies on the...

A debate around the book by Denis Segrestin ("Les chantiers du manager", Paris, Colin, 2004) gives an opportunity to hope for deeper and rigorous anaytical frameworks about organizational theories of firms. Two perspectives are suggested: firms as collective action systems open to their...

Based on recent field research, the paper suggests an interpretative model of territorial government in France. Relations between national and local authorities as well as policy- making processes suggest that the centralized State has faced a major decline of its hegemony and that...

The French scene in the field of HR management has entered a period that is worrying: a premium given to psychopathological approaches of employees. The article underlines the fact that HR management ignores basic lessons from social sciences about collective and organizational factors of...

L'article met en relief la passivité des cadres dirigeants du ministère de l'Équipement face à la décentralisation de 1981-2 et leurs raisons. Il détaille les cadres cognitifs dominants dans les services extérieurs. Il resitue les transferts de compétence et les adaptations dans une...