2019-09-05, Gond, Jean-Pascal, Bres, Luc

Combining insights from the sociology of markets and studies of consultants, this article examines the tool-based practices by which market actors enable the agencing of the supply and demand of the market in ways that shape the market’s trajectory. Building on 31 interviews and a rich set of secondary data, we provide an analysis of the development of a market for consultancy products and services for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the province of Quebec (Canada). Through analytical induction we identified six tool-based practices by which consultants contributed to the agencing of the market, and our results show how these practices collectively created market shifts. Our analysis offers new insights into the processes by which consultants’ tool-based practices produce market shifts, embed environmental and social concerns within market mechanisms, and ‘vascularize’ markets.

2017-02-08, Bres, Luc, Raufflet, Emmanuel, Boghossian, Johnny

The bureaucratic organization is still regarded as the conventional organizational form, but is ill-suited to an increasingly pluralistic world. Research on the variety of organizational forms has increased dramatically over the past three decades and offers the potential to understand better how pluralism is manifested and managed within organizations. However, this research remains fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize research on unconventional organizations to explore how organizations resolve or attenuate the tensions related to pluralism. Drawing from research in leading management journals, it covers seven distinct literatures: ‘referent organization’, ‘temporary organization’, ‘pluralistic organization’, ‘meta-organization’, ‘bridging organization’, ‘hybrid organization’, and ‘field-configuring event’. For each literature, we trace the genealogy of the key concepts and review their distinct insights regarding organizational pluralism. We then synthesize and discuss their collective contributions and conclude with avenues of research for pluralism in organizations.

2007, Bres, Luc, Lebouc, Marie-France, Clain, Olivier

Bien que l'organisation donne lieu à un champ de connaissance spécifique, la définition de cet objet théorique sous forme d'énoncé synthétique constitue un problème récurrent. Après avoir mis en évidence un savoir normalisé, dans ce que nous aurons défini comme la théorie des organisations, nous pourrons identifier une liste de définitions représentatives du champ. L'analyse de cette liste éclairera les difficultés qui ont pu être rencontrées par les théoriciens pour définir l'organisation et les stratégies mises en place pour y faire face. Ceci nous conduira à proposer une stratégie alternative : dans la théorie générale des sociétés de Michel Freitag, nous irons chercher un surplomb sociohistorique pour mieux comprendre les organisations. Ancrés dans cette perspective globale, nous serons à même d'échafauder concrètement une définition et sa formulation qui permettent de saisir l'organisation dans ses aspects les plus postmodernes, c'est-à-dire, à bien des égards, les plus actuels.