Sociologie et ethno-anthropologie de l'entrepriseStratégie d'Entreprise (ERE)

Recognize: • The cultural and social dimensions of the enterprise (introduction to the humanities, corporate anthropology) and the tools to better understand these dimensions of the enterprise (values, rules, missions, etc.). • The impact of tradition, corporate culture, social climate, social plans, management problems, working conditions on quality approaches and sustainable development. • Corporate culture: the source and collective identity, resistance to change and the accelerator of enterprise development, Master: • The areas of corporate culture. • The different corporate cultures. • Corporate culture at the service of strategic management. • Cultural obligations and prohibitions. • The strategic choices to be made to take account of business culture. • Change in the company through cultural management

Day 1: In the prism of sociology, ethnology and anthropology, the company as "total social fact".

Course 1 - Brief introduction to the social sciences (definitions, fields of application, methods, domains and currents) and explanation of their primary ambition: show both the diversity of cultures and the unity of man. The scope of the enterprise: knowledge about the enterprise sometimes reduces it to its economic sphere, its production process or its technical project. Sociology, ethnology and anthropology approach it as a "total social fact", either a sheet or a entanglement of technical, cultural, political and social events, negotiations, resistance, individual and collective representations, major decisions and daily acts, etc. It is by repeatedly observing the interactions that take place every day in the company that the sociologist or anthropologist manages to capture and restore the "totality" of the enterprise.

TD 1 - What do sociologists, ethnologists and anthropologists say about the company? From 8 articles or abstracts of books published by researchers in 8 different sectors of activity (electricity, space industry, luxury leather goods, insurance, etc.), it will be necessary to discover the concrete cases encountered, the questions asked in the context of an anthropology or sociology of the company. What do these empirical business studies teach us?

Course 2 - A concrete example of the application of ethnology to the enterprise (management): how does the "theory of gift" (Marcel Mauss, 1991) explain cooperation in enterprise (or its failures)? The goods, the information, the services circulate through the social links, as the donations once circulated in societies then called "primitive". Such exchanges require cooperation between employees. How can the company take advantage of employees' willingness to "give", to exchange, and thus to exist in a company?

TD 2 - What can sociology, ethnology and anthropology do for the company? On the basis of different experiences in the application of research on the company (by consultants, researchers, students or the company itself) related in different forms (press articles, interview, round table, website, etc.), it will be necessary to identify the possible levers of action and the concrete contributions of the sociological or anthropological method.

Day 2: How can we integrate human understanding, interaction and subjectivity into a practice of management, innovation or quality?

Course 3a - culture and business According to the definition of E. Tylor (1871), culture is "a complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs and any other disposition or use acquired by man living in society". It thus constitutes a "social heritage" that includes objects, goods, technical processes, ideas, habits, values. A key to cultural anthropology, culture was largely abandoned by social anthropology since the 1960s. In the 1980s/90s, the concept of "business culture" as a "management tool" or "strategic asset" was very successful and was gradually forgotten again. What constitutes a company's culture? What types and characteristics are there? Why can it be considered a resource by management? What about corporate culture in the context of globalizing the economy and internationalizing the labour market? Whatever models (cultural or not) are referred to, I will show the importance of focusing on the layout of material but also human and symbolic resources to understand and manage the enterprise, the central social institution of market economies.

Course 3b - change, transform or innovate? To use Schumpeter's definition, innovation is seen by economic analysis as a "creative destruction process". It leads to a violation of socially established rules. In the company, therefore, it is not only a matter of new technology or a singular management method, but of a tangle of circumstances which engage all its actors in a movement towards the future. By trying to unravel this tangle, we will define change, transformation, innovation and we will address the social reactions that accompany them and that management must face - membership, adaptation, resistance, circumvention.

Course 3c - elements of quality sociology Since the 1970s, the concept of quality has become a central concern, shared by both businesses and consumers. Despite the measurement indicators, there is still uncertainty about assessing the quality of goods or services: when they are not homogeneous and therefore incomparable (in the sense that they cannot be connected with each other through common dimensions), when an asymmetric relationship prohibits the customer, unlike the seller, from easily separating the good quality from the bad, or when the customer and business fail to reach agreement on the definition of the quality of the good or service exchanged. In these cases, the transaction is more a matter of judgment and confidence than of price or measure. They therefore constitute a black hole in standard market analysis. The sociology of quality makes it possible to overcome this lack by focusing on the coordination between the actors of the commercial interaction, its misunderstandings and its subjectivities, all of which management can seize to complete or renew its practices.

TD 3a - case study: creation and subsequent relocation of a call centre in North Africa by a French service company. On the basis of concrete data, students will be invited to collectively respond, in the form of role games, to a complex problem (concerning both "culture", innovation and quality) posed to management in the context of computerisation and then the relocation of part of the activity of a French company. How to reconcile different "professional cultures", different languages, different practices of the same activity? How to reconcile process transformation and continuity of customer relationship? How can we objectively measure the quality of service while taking into account the subjective perception of customers and employees? The TD will take place in 3 phases. First, it will be a matter of reading the documents and formulating the company's problem. Next, it will be necessary to propose "solutions" to management. To complete the session, I will present the proposal made by the ethnologist to this undertaking.

TD 3b – Application Exercise Students will be invited to prepare an application/response to a socio-anthropological problem (real or fictional, regarding management, culture, change and/or quality) about their company. It will follow a collective reflection on each of the cases exposed.

Table control (Duration 1h)

Alter N., 2000, Ordinary Innovation, Paris, French University Press. Auger M., Colleyn J.-P., 2009, L Bourcheix L., Joussellin M., and Moni M., 2014, "Today's Anthropology, Anthropology Otherwise" place of exchange, meeting, sharing and discussion", Journal of anthropologists, 136-137, 2014, 391-397. Camelin S., Houdard S., 2010, L-Ethnology, What do I know, Paris, University Presses of France. Flamant N., 2000, Une anthropologie des managers, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France. Karpik L., 2007, The economy of singularities, Nrf – Gallimard. Rivière C., 1997, Introduction to Anthropology, Paris, Hachette. Thévenet M., 2015, La culture d'entreprise, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.