The economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC) commonly deal with work by focusing on legal aspects or labor markets. However, their founding writings provide the basis for a particular interest in the forms that work takes and how it is carried out, the products it delivers and the organization of tasks. At a time when it is proclaimed that work is undergoing major changes, the ability of EC/SC to offer an analysis of new forms of work is therefore an important issue. The chapter describes the theoretical bases for addressing these forms of work in the context of the shift in industrial specialization that is specific to firms and economies, and in particular the shift toward a service dimension in offerings, which could be linked to a shift toward two specific worlds of production (in the sense of Storper and Salais): the world of interpersonal production and the world of intellectual resources. This makes EC/SC a valuable theoretical framework in the context of contemporary issues. It is also a useful theoretical framework for dealing with one of the crucial dimensions of work in today’s organizations: the ability of these organizations to achieve cooperation between plural actors, rather than coordination. The case of the spread of agile project management is used to illustrate the forms taken by work today, which has been partially won over by aspects of interpersonal production or intellectual resources but is still dominated by the worlds of industrial and merchant production.

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New Forms of Labor, Service Work and Convention Theory

  • Pascal Ughetto

摘要

The economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC) commonly deal with work by focusing on legal aspects or labor markets. However, their founding writings provide the basis for a particular interest in the forms that work takes and how it is carried out, the products it delivers and the organization of tasks. At a time when it is proclaimed that work is undergoing major changes, the ability of EC/SC to offer an analysis of new forms of work is therefore an important issue. The chapter describes the theoretical bases for addressing these forms of work in the context of the shift in industrial specialization that is specific to firms and economies, and in particular the shift toward a service dimension in offerings, which could be linked to a shift toward two specific worlds of production (in the sense of Storper and Salais): the world of interpersonal production and the world of intellectual resources. This makes EC/SC a valuable theoretical framework in the context of contemporary issues. It is also a useful theoretical framework for dealing with one of the crucial dimensions of work in today’s organizations: the ability of these organizations to achieve cooperation between plural actors, rather than coordination. The case of the spread of agile project management is used to illustrate the forms taken by work today, which has been partially won over by aspects of interpersonal production or intellectual resources but is still dominated by the worlds of industrial and merchant production.