Conflict inside organisation

An organisation cannot be explained by the technical-economic "one best way" approach either, or by technological or environmental contingencies, or by the logic of feeling, or by the dynamics of major essential antagonisms (between social classes, for example), but by the interaction of actors within the organisation, by the reconstruction work that unfolds. Within an organisation, all the actors are in conflict with each other and about everything.

Erhard Friedberg (1942-) has developed the general theoretical model of organisation understood as the process (always political in nature) of constructing and maintaining “local or partial orders“, e.g. orderly patterns of interaction among a set of individual and collective actors linked by strategic interdependence. Formal organisations are only one subset in a continuum of such “local orders”, and the theoretical and analytical framework designed for their analysis can therefore be transposed for the study of apparently less structured and formalized contexts of action as for instance network and project organisations, social and political mobilisations, public policy arenas, economic markets and other forms of collective action.

Control on "area of uncertainty"

Each actor attempts to control an "area of uncertainty" in order to consolidate his or her strategic position. The power he or she exerts over other actors in the organisation is nevertheless relative to the interdependence linking up the actors with each other and with what is at stake for them (the most important thing for the actor).

In this perspective, instances of dysfunctioning are not interpreted as the result of things simply drifting off course, but as the expression of latent functions that are also tied to rationality and which need to be understood locally. It is thus a question of studying the interactions between actors and systems and of understanding the system from the inside. Each system is specific; there is no general theory of organisation.

Organisation = socio-political system

+ actors, interactions

+ rules + game around the rules

+ power relations and stakes

+ areas of uncertainty, margins for manoeuvre

+ strategies, alliances and coalitions

Further reading on theories of action:

Crozier, M. (1963). Le phénomène bureaucratique. Paris, Seuil.Crozier, M. and E. Friedberg (1977). L'acteur et le système. Paris, éditions du Seuil.

Friedberg, E. (1997). Local orders : dynamics of organised action. Greenwich, Conn : Jai Press.

March, J. G. and H. A. Simon (1958). Organisations. New York, Wiley.

Merton, R. K. (1957). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York, The Free Press.

Merton, R. K. (1965). Structure bureaucratique et personnalité. Paris, Dunod.

Parsons, T. (1937). The Structure of Social Action. New York, McGrawHill.

Vinck D., Penz B.,Rivera I. (2004). "Des bonnes raisons d'échouer dans un projet technique : la construction sociale de l'impact." Sciences de la Société.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 725