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This paper explores the conditions under which urban entrepreneurship can develop through art-based interventions. Drawing on two contrasting case studies (Civic City in France, Fieris Fééries in Belgium) and taking actor-network theory (ANT) as a starting analytical point, we outline the tensions involved in the implementation process of such interventions. We focus on the capacity of urban entrepreneurs to engage different relevant stakeholders (artists, local government and citizens), establish connections between disconnected worlds that are likely to challenge existing institutional structures and eventually create novelty. We identify these actors as ‘translators’. The paper shows that when urban entrepreneurs play an active translation role consistently over time, art-based interventions can have a substantial impact on urban regeneration., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Practices for managing scientific and technical experts today require a critical re‐evaluation. This paper takes a sociological perspective (convention theory) to examine the tensions and conflicts that arise in the implementation of practices for managing knowledge workers. Drawing on six case studies of knowledge‐intensive organizations and participant observation, we elucidate three different coexisting logics – technical, market and managerial – that together create tensions. We go beyond the analysis of practices in R&D to unveil the nature of those tensions and to show how and under what circumstances arrangements are made between the different logics. Our study demonstrates that knowledge‐intensive organizations have relied on reward and dual ladder systems to solve the tensions between logics. Dual ladders often fail because they are the representation of the problem rather than the solution. We argue that the way for the issue of managing knowledge workers to evolve lies in the enrichment of arrangements, the deepening of compromises and logic hybridization. We discuss the implications of these findings for R&D management practices

En 2012, une auteure de theâtre et une metteure en scene s’emparent de la fermeture de l’usine de lingerie Lejaby en Haute-Loire pour monter un spectacle theâtral. Le texte s’appuie sur un travail de recueil de paroles mene aupres des ouvrieres et la scenographie traduit une longue observation de terrain. La piece montre comment la lutte contre une delocalisation industrielle est un moment ou les femmes saisissent la place que le travail a pu prendre dans la construction de leurs identites individuelles comme collectives. Le travail, loin de se reduire a un ensemble de gestes, de fonctions ou de contraintes circonscrites, est un flux qui impregne toute la vie, de l’intime au politique.

International audience; Can art offer us a new sort of knowledge about corporate restructuring? This question laid at the center of a European research project that brought together researchers, artists and persons involved in the restructuring of companies. The initial findings are presented herein. The goal was to identify and describe the sort of knowledge produced through the arts. In line with Becker’s (2007) suggestion to see works of art as possible and potentially fertile portrayals of society, what art reveals about the restructuring of firms can enhance the nature and modes of production of academic knowledge in this field. For this purpose, reference is made to works from different arts: cinema, photography, theater. Works of art are presented as a fertile, complex source that brings to light deliberately or involuntarily hidden aspects of corporate restructuring. By knowling from experience, works of art provide an unconventional view (sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory) of the usual descriptions of economic restructuring contained in academic research.; L’art est-il susceptible d’apporter un nouveau type de connaissance sur les restructurations d’entreprises ? C'est autour de cette question que s'est construit le projet de recherche européen qui est à la base de cet article. Nous rendons compte ici des premiers résultats de ce programme de recherche qui a réuni chercheurs, artistes et acteurs des restructurations autour de productions artistiques en nous efforçant d’identifier et de qualifier la nature spécifique des connaissances que le recours à la représentation artistique peut permettre de produire. Suivant l’invitation qui nous est faite par Becker (2007) de considérer la représentation artistique comme une représentation possible et potentiellement riche de la société, nous défendons l’idée que les représentations artistiques des restructurations d’entreprises sont susceptibles d’enrichir, voire de renouveler, la nature et les modes de production des connaissances académiques sur ce phénomène, plus précisément par le recours à deux œuvres artistiques de natures différentes (un film, un travail photographique, une pièce de théâtre). Cet article présente les œuvres d’art comme un matériau riche et complexe permettant le dévoilement de certaines dimensions, délibérément ou involontairement cachées ou occultées, des processus de restructurations. Par le biais d’une connaissance expérientielle, les œuvres d’art fournissent en effet un regard décalé, tantôt complémentaire, tantôt contradictoire, sur les représentations des restructurations majoritairement proposées par la recherche académique.

International audience

Restructuring practices belong to today's organizational life. Even if the phenomenon is not new it significantly evolved over time, both in terms of motives and in terms of expressions, from major events to permanent practices, from crisis to competitiveness restructurings, from reactive to more proactive decisions, from highly visible to more silent decisions. Much debated in popular medias, restructuring issues have been also inspiring scholars from various fields (sociology, economics, management, law...) for now three decades. But at the same time, academic literature, especially in management, has hardly contributed in understanding the deep complexity and the multiple hidden dimensions of restructuring situations. We suggest ethnographic studies could open the " black box " of restructuring issues, thus complementing the inevitably over-simplified models testing the explanatory relationships between a set of variables or constructs. Traditional ethnographic method is scarcely chosen by scholars analyzing restructuring issues, mainly for reasons related to practical access to fieldwork: restructuring is a hot issue, and it remains difficult to access information and informants in a restructuring organization. In order to overcome these issues, we developed a specific research method what we call an Art-Based, Collective and Dialogic Ethnographic method (1.), both in its deliberate choices (1.1.) and its emergent dimensions (1.2.). Then we describe the outputs of the method (2.), in terms of creating new knowledge about restructuring issues (2.1.), but also in terms of fostering new ways of teaching, thinking or practicing restructurings (2.2.). In the final section, we discuss the basic principles of the method as well as its outcomes, especially in terms of creating "vicarious experiential knowledge" (3.). This method is based on three main features. First, we suggest investigate restructuring issues through artworks. Second, as restructurings are multi-actor situations and multi-dimensional phenomena, research on restructurings could benefit from a heterogeneous and multi-disciplinary group of actors as a community of inquirers confronting their points of view and reflecting together about the complexity and the heterogeneity of restructuring phenomena in a dialogical process of investigation. Third, combining in the same research design a heterogeneous group of actors and a series of artworks about restructurings can lead to innovative research methods: collective comments about artworks and indirect analysis of restructuring, reflexive analysis of actors' involvement, comments and discussions used as data, what we propose here as a new form of organizational ethnographic research.