Organizations and Organizing in a French Context (PDF)

Within the Western economic environment, the French economic model has endured as a particularly distinctive approach to capitalism (Boyer, 2005). This model has generally been characterised by a number of well-established and typical features including, for example: a stronger role for the state than the Anglo-Saxon economic model; an economic elite drawn from, and destined for, the highest levels of civil service (Maclean et al., 2006; Davoine and Ravasi, 2013); industrial policy grounded in, and driven by, a propensity for major projects on a grand scale; and, an overall potent industrial base with particular strength in international sectors such as the automotive, energy, chemical and aerospace industries. The specificities of French organization and management practices have been profoundly embedded and rooted in the French socio-economic environment. From Henri Fayol to post-modern and post-structural critically focused writings by Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Lacan and Levi-Strauss French authors have, without doubt had a very serious impact on management and organization thinking. Edited by Eric Davoine, Ewan Oiry and Peter Stokes, this special issue draws together contributions by a number of significant commentators: Christoph Barmeyer and Ulrike Mayrhofer; Mairi Maclean and Charles Harvey; Jean-Pierre Segal; Jacques Rojot; Jean-Francois Chanlat; Yves-Frederic Livian; and, Henri Savall and Veronique Zardet These seven papers offer new, diverse and complementary perspectives and contributions on French Organizations. They help to explore different facets of French organizational life (organization structures, management networking, professional identities, conflicts and so on and so forth) and French Organization Science (concepts, authors, researcher field, interaction with Anglophone OS field). In so doing, the special issue aims to recharge and reinvigorate the analysis and assessment of French organizations and organizing contexts.