CONFERENCE - Call for Papers

Changing Organisations:
Towards a new economic and political governance within organisations of the English-speaking world.

Friday 3 and Saturday 4 December 2010, Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des irlandais 75005 Paris, salle 1

Governance, which relates to the processes determining authority and the control of resources, has always been a crucial dimension of the life of organisations, whether they belong to the economic, political or social sphere. A number of recent changes, such as globalisation and the revolution of new information technology have forced organisations to rethink their decision-making structures and have simultaneously favoured convergence as well as the adoption of highly innovative practices.

The advent of the post-industrial society has meant that the economic and financial activities have been redesigned according to the law of the market. The Efficient Markets Theory has had a direct influence on the morphology of organisations and their decision-making processes. From then on, the corporation was no longer considered as a clearly delineated institution but evolved into a constantly moving network of contracts between a number of stakeholders. This evolution on the ground was in part given a formal definition through the functionalist theory of corporate governance which lay the foundations of shareholder capitalism. In addition, the State has worked in some cases to foster the conditions for the optimization of business shareholder value, notably in the field of financial innovation. However, the current economic and financial crisis is challenging this development model and has forced a revision of forms of governance as well as a redefinition of the role of the State.

In parallel, in a society characterised by increased fragmentation and individualisation, political parties have tried to update their practices in response to the apparent crisis of traditional channels of collective representation. The inclusion of a wider range of actors, which calls into question the primacy of activists in the parties’ decision-making structures, has led to a re-arrangement of forms of engagement and participation within political organisations. Indeed, faced with recruitment and mobilisation difficulties, political parties have had to modernise their structures and have striven to establish a more direct link between the leadership and the grassroots through the introduction of new procedures for the designation of leaders, the consultation of party members and the approval of election manifestos and platforms. The definition of party programmes and policy has taken a novel deliberative dimension by associating activists, members and voters.

Business and political leaders alike are thereby trying to adapt to a global and renewed context of organisational « democratisation ». The emergence of web 2.0 and its network-based model of participative intelligence has opened new prospects to organisations by relying more on net-root forms of governance. This evolution has opened the door to more interactive – and possibly - more efficient regulation systems.

The objective of this conference is to confront the rhetoric of democratisation born out of the new governance apparatus with the empirical effects of the new practices. Is organisation 2.0 more democratic and transparent? Can the new governance models allow businesses to reconcile shareholder profit with a positive societal impact? Are the new consensus-building participative structures the panacea to the decline in partisan engagement? What are the practical manifestations of the replacement of the old insular hierarchical organisation model with participative horizontal structures? Has the new paradigm really displaced the old? What have been the organisational and state-related conditions of the emergence of this new form of governance? This conference therefore sets out to analyse the evolution of the governance of economic, political and social organisations in the English-speaking world and to reflect upon the theoretical and institutional logic of such transformations.

Proposals (300-500 words) and a short CV (5-10 lines) should be sent by 5 May 2010 to
emmanuelle.avril@univ-paris3.fr and christine.zumello@univ-paris3.fr

Emmanuelle Avril is Professor of Contemporary British Civilisation and a member of the CREC/CREW;
Christine Zumello is Associate Professor in North American Civilisation and a member of the CERVEPAS/CREW.