KSOD 2290 - The society of organizations

We live in a society of organizations. From birth to death, everyone’s experience is mediated by organizations in which one is passing through. The organizational phenomenon is an essential key to understanding inertia and change in our contemporary societies, as it is an essential medium for collective action. Paying attention to it provides key and genuine insights into such objects as work, knowledge, markets, policymaking, social movements, inequalities; which albeit diverse rely on similar social processes that involve power, cooperation and conflict.

The course will begin with a presentation of the mode of reasoning developed by the French school of organizational sociology which has been notably conceptualized by Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg based on many research conducted at the Center for the sociology of organizations. This approach is a mode of reasoning that helps to understand how collective action emerges from coordination and cooperation. Based on a relational conception of power, it analyses how actors interact at an intermediate (meso) level, and how this helps to understand both their individual behaviors (at the micro level), and larger institutional processes (at the macro level).

It will then move to session focused on general, sociological topics such as market, law, profession, work, State, knowledge to explore, on the one hand, the relations between organizational sociology and other subfields of sociology, and, on the other hand, to show how this organizational perspective provides a powerful tool to analyze a range of political, economic and social processes, at different scales in space and time.

The thematic sessions will not be led by Patrick Castel but by guest academics who are specialists in the topics covered.

Session 1 (07/09/2026) : Introduction, overview and presentation of assessment procedures (Patrick Castel)

Sessions 2 and 3 (14/09 et 21/09/2026) : The French school of organizational sociology (Patrick Castel)

Session 4 (28/09/2026) : Institutional entrepreneurship (Henri Bergeron)

Session 5 (05/10/2026) : Are universities organizations? (Christine Musselin)

Session 6 (12/10/2026) : Short-multiple questionnaires + research notes update (Patrick Castel)

Session 7 (19/10/2026) : Knowledge challenges in organizations (Renaud Crespin)

Session 8 (02/11/2026) : Managing Business Reputations, Organizing Market Relations (Kevin Mellet)

Session 9 (09/11/2026) : Law & corporations (Claire Lemercier)

Session 10 (16/11/2026) : Organizations facing market « laws » (Etienne Nouguez and Olivier Pilmis)

Session 11 (23/11/2026) : The organizational dimensions of modes of living (Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier)

Session 12 (30/11/2026) : Short-multiple questionnaires + presentation « cooperating in a competitive world » (Pierre François)

• 2 short multiple-choice questionnaires on session content (sessions 6 and 12) (30% of mark)
• A group research note: each group chooses a possible research subject and, based on reading the general press and scientific articles, identifies the different organizations involved and produces a note identifying the organizational dimensions that would need to be explored to study it.

• In addition to the research note, students will have to prepare each thematic session with a short reading.