Arrangement institutionnel et fonctionnement du marché du travail. Le cas de la chasse de tête

Do head hunters firms improve the matching process, and therefore contribute to the efficiency of the labour market of top executives? Far from being a passive vector, on one hand they contribute to shape companies' specific demand; on the other hand, they initiate the supply of candidates resorting to their networks. Head hunters implement idiosyncratic categories of evaluation in order to fit as well as possible both parties' preferences. If such a type of transaction reduces information costs, it nevertheless produces distortions with regard to the market efficiency. It introduces a bias in favour of mobility between identical jobs (in terms of occupation and industry) and therefore participates to the labour market segmentation, which impedes substitution mechanisms. As a consequence, they contribute to the inflationary pressures that characterise the top executives' labour market. — Special issue: New patterns of institutions.     

L’art des bergers et les moutons qualifiés Les figures sociales en jeu sur le marché agricole

On the basis of meticulous chronicles kept about the making of mutton in the Barèges valley in the French Pyrenees, this sociological study of markets examines changes in the complex relations formed between economic interests and local identities in farming. In the 1970s, pressure to standardize mutton for sale on a national market tended to efface the specific characteristics of local produce from this area in particular. In the 1980s however, producers tried to resist in various ways — direct sales in 1984, a brand name strategy in 1987 — against this loss of specificity in an undifferentiated marketplace. In 1995, a label of origin (AOC) was drawn up that not only singled out and stabilized local produce but also redefined groups of actors, ranging from producers who now focus on quality produce to consumers who increasingly look like gourmets searching for “originality”. Furthermore, this certification process led to closely linking the production and sale of produce to the promotion of a redefined local identity, which we might have imagined as being threatened owing to the expansion of business rationales.     

Confiance et qualité des produits alimentaires : une approche par la sociologie des relations marchandes

Given the current crises, what means do actors implement in order to redefine the conditions for both a social contract and an economic adjustment between the producers and consumers of foodstuffs? These means can be interpreted as ways to cope with the risk of a mismatch between consumer expectations and the quality of produce in the marketplace - as new ways of assembling actors around interests that are not always stable. This quite high degree of indeterminacy, which comes into play throughout the market game, makes it necessary to better understand forms of association among actors and the arrangements that emerge as the market evolves as a function of new forms of adjustment. The actions undertaken by a group of mussel producers in France are reported. Under pressure to standardize produce, they have, nonetheless, imagined solutions for identifying produce and sorts of production so as to force the marketplace to deal with differences in quality. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Les politiques d'emploi et la transformation des normes : une comparaison européenne

Given the central orientation of the European employment strategy — adapt unemployment compensation systems so as to broaden access to jobs — the effects of policies in this field are examined by focusing on three axes: the impact on unemployment; the action on employment standards, and trends in the social regulation underlying these policies. A comparative view reveals how much national systems have been able to interpret EU objectives in their own way. This does not invalidate the pertinence of a European level of regulation,but it does expose the conditions for clarifying standards for public actions and leading actors to become involved in EU institutions, a source of legitimacy still to be constructed. This comparison of six national cases (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom) sheds light on the importance of the social compromises that set the framework for job polices. The quality of occupational transitions is related to the ability of actors to jointly regulate employment policy and labor market standards. — Special issue: New patterns of institutions.     

Qualité des produits alimentaires et marques de filières

Brands have recently cropped up in the distribution of fresh produce - a phenomenon closely linked to food and health crises in the past few years. Public authorities have been creating new control and monitoring procedures, tightening regulations on production and modifying regulations about official labels of quality. Meanwhile, retailers have been adopting new strategies for segmenting supply. How does this affect the supply of produce to consumers? How does it modify relations between producers and distributors? Under what conditions do these parties have an interest in complying? How do these segmentation strategies interact with the policies advocated by public officials and affect the raising of standards for a “minimum quality”? - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Bien-être et souffrance en élevage : conditions de vie au travail des personnes et des animaux

Starting in the 1980s in France, the scientific problems related to the well-being of animals reduced a complicated social critique of industrial systems for raising livestock to a matter of adapting animals to the living conditions imposed by these systems. This swept out of view questions about the working conditions for farmers and wage-earners. However people and animals tend to share living conditions in these systems, conditions that cause suffering. Given the intensified pace of work, as people tend an ever larger number of animals, and the mounting pressure on both people and livestock, affects are repressed, and communication breaks down. Relations to one's self and to others are altered, and the relation to death is “pathologized” at the workplace - thus providing further evidence of a failed relation to life and to others in animal husbandry. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Les transformations du marché du travail : un éclairage à partir de l’analyse des décalages entre offre et demande dans un système productif localisé

This new look at approaches to the labor market emphasizes that changes observed during the past twenty years are related to trends as much in supply as in demand. Analyzing both these sides is shown to be valuable for understanding the impact on labor market trends and shedding light on the tensions and contradictions between supply and demand. The mechanisms that have come into play during this period are analyzed in a local productive system, namely agribusiness in the lower Rhone valley in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region of France.     

Le marché comme rencontre d’activités de régulation : initiatives et innovations dans l’approvisionnement bio et local de la restauration collective

How to apply Jean-Daniel Reynaud's theory of social regulation to market relations? When applied to the results drawn from fieldwork on the supplying of organic and local produce to catering businesses serving public institutions in France, this grid of analysis shows that organizing this supply chain involves many activities of regulation. An explanation is provided about how hard existing regulations make it to search for local produce. Two contrasting cases show the degree to which the parties involved can skirt around existing regulations and also, use certain regulations to construct new ones. The innovative regulations that enter into application are qualified as being “joint”, since they stem from the efforts of the parties in catering and in agriculture to agree about how to organize transactions, which had previously been done through the work of market middlemen. In that case, instead of reasoning in terms of a pre-existing supply and demand, we have to understand how supply and demand gradually take shape through the process of working out regulations.     

Privatisation des télécommunications et relations de travail en Amérique latine

This article deals with the privatization of telecommunications in the three largest Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Labor unions have strongly affected the way telecommunications have been privatized in Latin America and its timing, but they have not been able to keep their traditional influence from waning. Comparing Argentina and Mexico brings to light opposite models of labor relations based, for the one, on the denationalization of management and loss of guaranteed jobs for wage-earners and, for the other, on the maintenance of control over telecommunications by local entrepreneurs and the preservation of guaranteed employment. The more recent privatization implemented in Brazil has fueled debate about the consequences on collective action in an era of open-market telecommunications. — Special issue: Latin America.     

Différence et similitude: le marché du travail dans 1'esprit des adolescents et des adolescentes

This article recalls that the variance in the aspirations of young people and in their visions of the labour market is partically unexplained by socio-demographic variables. It argues that the young possess a common vision which goes beyond the routine of the social categories to which they belong. It suggests that the analysis which permits one to arrive at this result could serve to enrich the results of quantitative analysis. The article observes that the division of opinion among the young witnesses a great diversity in consciousness. But it shows that this heterogeneity could hide a deep structure, subtle but constraining, which assures not only the diversity of their knowledge but also its fluidity and homogeneity.
Cet article rappelle que la variance des aspirations des jeunes ou de leurs visions du marché du travail est partiellement inexpliquée par les variables socio-démographiques. II constate que les jeunes possedènt une vision commune qui dé le cadre des catégories sociales auxquelles ils appartiennent. II laisse entendre que l'analyse qui permet d'en arriver à ce constat pourrait servir à enrichir les résultats des analyses quantitatives. L'article observe que la répartition des opinions des jeunes témoigne d'une grande diversité des consciences. Mais il réalise que cette hétérogénéité pourrait cacher une structure profonde, souple mais limitative, qui assurerait aussi bien la diversité des consciences que leur fluidité et leur homogénéité.     

La clôture comme seule protection ? Syndicats du spectacle et marché du travail dans l’entre-deux-guerres (1919-1937)

The case of performers in the entertainment industry during the period between the two World wars serves to test the hypothesis of a monopolistic closure, as workers try to improve their lot by restricting access to the labor market. In line with the predictions of this hypothesis in the sociology of professions, actors and singers did try to close the labor market by instituting a “professional card”. Contrary to expectations however, labor organizations of musicians sought to control pay scales and jobs by opening the market so widely that anyone entering it joined the organization. These two different strategies affected these groups’ identities by drawing legitimate boundaries and influencing the nature and degree of solidarity. Beyond these strategies, two prospects for emancipation contrast with each other: the professional one of an exclusive group among performing artists on stage and in song, and the wage-earning one of an inclusive group among musicians.     

Le juge est (souvent) une femme. Conceptions du métier et pratiques des magistrates et magistrats aux Affaires familiales

In France, disputes related to marital separations are heard in the Family Chambers of the Superior Courts (Chambres de la famille des Tribunaux de Grande instance) by a single judge (a family court judge). As the magistracy feminizes, the question of what influence a judge's gender has over rulings in family cases has become a controversial topic and a media hobbyhorse, under mounting pressure from organizations that defend fathers’ rights. Using the results of a collective survey conducted in four Superior Courts between 2008 and 2010, this article shows that male and female family court judges do not follow the same personal and professional paths and do not assume their jobs under the same conditions or at the same moment in their careers, and thus perceive their roles in quite different ways. Despite all these differences, there is great homogeneity in these judges’ decisions, no matter their sex.     

Des « employeurs multiples » au « noyau dur » d'employeurs : relations d'emploi et concurrence sur le marché des comédiens intermittents

Managerial literature sometimes uses an ideal-type of contingent labor to describe what it imagines to be future changes in organizing work and labor. These changes would entail a shortening and, therefore, multiplication of labor contracts. Statistics on the intermittents du spectacle (an administrative category in France referring to performers as well as stagehands who work for the duration of a project in show business, television and the performing arts) are analyzed to show that the conception of work in the media industry, as reflected in the aforementioned writings, cannot account for the actual plurality of relations between these part-time employees and their employers. In the media industry labor market, two types of labor relations can be distinguished. The one is close to the ideal-type of an intermittent employee who has occasional relations with his employer, whereas the other is based on a “hard core” of employers with whom an employee has recurrent relations. This core significantly affects the number of engagements of these performing artists and contributes decisively to the stability of their careers.     

Ordres socio-économiques et polarisation de la recherche dans l'agriculture : pour une critique des rapports science/société

What if farming were the exemplar of a knowledge-based society? Due to their many, ambivalent effects, research and innovation in agronomy lie at the center of trends now shaping the world of agriculture. To present this history, the types of pairing are examined between, on the one hand, processes for producing scientific knowledge and techniques and, on the other, contingent forms for organizing collective action. For this purpose, the notion of a “socioeconomic order” is introduced to account for the multiplication of collective spaces of action based on specific systems of norms and cooperation. Studying these pairings brings to light three “models of polarization of research” in France (the Colbertist model, academic polarization, and fragmented polarization), which have changed over the past fifty years. Accordingly, agriculture's recent history is interpreted as the joint transformation of socioeconomic orders and these modes of polarization. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

L’adaptation des modèles de production dans les pays émergents L’exemple de l’industrie automobile en Argentine

How to test for the existence of a new model of production based on the firm lending an ear to customer demands and valuing the individual and collective intelligence of its work force? The facts for putting this model to the test of reality come from an analysis of two Argentinean automobile-makers, subsidiaries of Toyota and Volkswagen. Various aspects of their organization policy provide evidence of their capacity for making adaptations by “hybridizing” the parent firm’s model with the rationales inherent in the network of local actors (suppliers and labor unions, in particular). These firms are open systems with a narrow margin of maneuver. — Special issue: Latin America.     

Contenir le marché : la transition de la criée à la cotation électronique à la Bourse de Paris

Open outcry was fully replaced at the Paris Bourse by an automated trade execution system (CAC) in the late 1980s. In this article, we focus on the circumstances that made this transition possible. We analyze the diverse compromises (both social and technical) that the officials and engineers in charge of the innovation process constructed in order to stabilize the new market device. They had to carefully inscribe into the new system the interests of the actors at stake: bankers and stockbrokers. This case study contributes to economic sociology by drawing a relation between a technical device and the interests set around the “modernization” of a market.     

Soutenir le marché : les nouveaux instruments de la politique du logement

This examination of the tax incentives to individuals, established since the 1980s, for stimulating investments in building new rentals runs counter to the prevailing opinion about the French state's withdrawal from the housing sector. These arrangements have become a key instrument in housing policy. Though playing a decisive part in designing them, public authorities then lose control to private players, in particular real estate developers, who play a key role in implementing them. As the analysis of these arrangements shows, players in the market depend on interventions by public authorities. In fact, the very nature of public interventions is altered not only by being more oriented toward market players but also by losing visibility. Furthermore, the costs are hard to assess, and the effects, highly uncertain.     

La maladie des coûts est-elle contagieuse ? Le cas des ensembles de musique ancienne

To complete traditional explanations of why the performing arts tend to run a deficit, the case of Early Music orchestras is examined. The usual mechanisms do not suffice to explain why these institutions suffer from the “illness of costs”. Two hypotheses are combined to complete Baumol’s model. For one thing the deepening deficit of Early Music orchestras is related to their professionalization; and for another, it is explained by their being simultaneously in two markets: the concert market and the musicians’ labor market, where they have to compete with subsidized orchestras.     

Quand la formation ne suffit pas : la préparation des étudiants à l’emploi en Angleterre,en France et en Suède

The proliferation of internships and the rise of professionalisation in higher education are, in France, frequently condemned as evidence of a quest for greater employability, driven by a skills-based approach. A comparative analysis of the methods used to prepare students for employment shows the degree to which the social mechanisms are homogeneous in England (employability) and in Sweden (bildning). In France, the transition from higher education to employment entails a process of pre-professionalisation. This is characterised by the dominant role of professional skills and their incorporation into the structure of initial education itself. Rather than the outcome of a process of commodification, this mechanism of pre-professionalisation is explained by the persistence of an idealized conception of “matching” that still profoundly marks the relations between education and employment in France.