Organizational Literature, Francophone

From Industrial Sociology to Organizational Analysis: More Than 50 Years of Francophone Research

After World War II, and a long time after the pioneering work of Fayol, the first sociological questions concerning organizations within Francophone countries were raised in studies led by the French sociologist [Page 1117]Georges Friedman, who laid the foundations for a distinctly French approach to the sociology of work during the 1950s and 1960s. Friedman defined the sociology of work as the study of all human collectivities existing for the purpose of work, and it is within this vast framework that he situated the sociology of organizations. Studies that had organizations as their central focus did not really emerge in the Francophone countries before the 1960s. One of the first groups, if not the first, devoted to such studies formed around Crozier. His Center for the Sociology of Organizations was founded to study French institutions in a context of rapid social change. Many French sociologists were critical of this new endeavor.

More oriented toward theory and large sociological questions, the majority of French sociologists, at that time inspired largely by Marxism, had a tendency to see in existing work an industrial sociology geared mainly toward employers' interests. It was in this relatively hostile sociological context that Crozier founded his research center. Nonetheless, it quickly became the hub for researchers interested in organizations all over the French-speaking countries and even beyond. In this respect, many of the best-known French-speaking contemporary researchers have been more or less associated with the Center. Its hegemony was challenged in the 1970s and the 1980s, when comparable centers emerged in both France and Quebec.

In France, the introduction of new teaching methods in schools and universities saw a number of relevant developments: (a) the foundation of the Université Paris-Dauphine, dedicated to organization sciences; (b) the creation of new research centers, whether or not linked to the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS; National Center for Scientific Research), the most important of which are the Centre de recherche en gestion (Centre of research on management), within the Ecole Polytechnique, the Centre de gestion scientifique (Center for Scientific Management), the Laboratoire de sociologie de l'innovation (Laboratory of the sociology of innovation, within the École des Mines), the Laboratoire de sociologie du changement des institutions (Laboratory of the sociology of institutional change, within the CNRS), the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (National Academy of Arts and Trades) laboratory, the Groupe de sociologie industrielle of Lyon (GLYSI), and the Laboratoire d'économie et de sociologie du travail (LEST), in Aix-en-Provence; (c) the emerging role of management-oriented research; (d) the increasing interest in sociological laboratories dedicated to the study of work and organizations; and (e) the dynamism of the French journal Sociologie du travail, all of which gradually stimulated more work in this area at the end of the 1970s and beyond. Outside France, in Quebec, for example, similar phenomena were taking place. Nowadays, all management schools, whatever their focus, even engineering schools, integrate courses concerning organizations into their programs.

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