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This study focuses on a unique type of small business—boutiquehotels in Istanbul, Turkey—, and aims to understand whetheremployers' use of internal flexibility strategies is associatedwith boutique hotel employees' intention to stay in theirorganization. Internal flexibility strategies refer to shiftwork, longworkweeks, unpaid overtime, and working preferred hours.Our study focuses on the experience of employees in boutique hotels in Turkey, which is one of the largest economies globally with its hospitality sector being the eighth largest in the world (Zeytinoglu et al., 2012a and 2012b). We test the conceptual model of internal flexibility strategies and intention to stay using data from 20 interviews and 122 surveys with employees in 32 boutique hotels.As our qualitative and quantitative study shows, shiftwork decreasesboutique hotel employees' intention to stay, but long workweeksand working unpaid overtime do not affect the intention to stay.Furthermore, as our qualitative study shows, the close family-like workenvironments that exist in boutique hotels contribute to theemployees' intention to stay. As our respondents said in thequalitative part of the study: “‘We're like afamily!' and cannot leave our ‘home'!”, despitenot liking the shiftwork.By examining the relationships between flexibility and intention tostay in small workplaces such as boutique hotels, our study contributesto both the academic literature on internal labour flexibility and tothe model of intention to stay. For practitioners, this study providesevidence on the use of the type of internal labour flexibilitystrategies used in boutique hotels, contributing to the understandingof how boutique hotels can be successful in retaining valuable staff.

Keywords: internal labour flexibility, intention to stay, boutique hotel, flexibilité interne du travail, intention de rester, hôtel-boutique, flexibilidad laboral interna, intención de permanecer, hotel boutique

This paper reports evidence gathered in the case ofthe United Mine Workers of America and its activities in Eastern Canada during the period 1900-1920.

Results, obtained using structural equation modeling on a sample of 390 French employees, supported our hypotheses. They highlighted the positive effect of managerial empowerment on adaptive performance. In addition, results showed that empowerment was more strongly related to adaptive performance when perceived supervisor support was high.The primary aim of this study is to examine the effect of managerial empowerment on employees' adaptive performance. Failures of empowerment practices also suggest the need to study the boundary conditions under which managerial empowerment can facilitate adaptive performance.As the nature of work is changing, employees' adaptive performance (employees' ability to work creatively, learn new skills, and adapt to diverse social contexts and new environments) becomes a prominent factor that helps organizations attain their objectives. Previous research has mainly focused on individual differences as predictors of adaptive performance. In contrast, the role of managerial variables in promoting adaptive performance has been overlooked.

Keywords: soutien managérial, changement organisationnel, stratégie d'adaptation, empowerment, supervisor support, organizational change, adaptation strategy, promoción de la autonomía, apoyo del manáger, cambio organizacional, estrategia de adaptación

How can we ensure that our work as researchers is useful? Despite the growing institutionalization of the ways in which scientific knowledge is articulated in research, an “institutional epistemology” is structuring academic research according to which researchers may not act based on the constructive (or transformative) properties they produce. This scientific autonomy represents at once an important condition for a type of research that is not reduced to its instrumental virtues and a challenge for partnership research projects. Starting from an account given by a researcher whose intellectual and professional trajectory sheds light on the fundamental challenges of joint research, our article looks in particular at ways of overcoming tensions (epistemological, political, etc.) that put joint research to the test while at the same time as constituting that test.

Keywords: recherche conjointe, interdisciplinarité, transformation sociale, récit de pratiques, Jean-Pierre Revéret, joint research, interdisciplinarity, social transformation, account of practices, Jean-Pierre Revéret

This paper attempts to answer the question how and why did planet Earth begin to glow in the dark over the long twentieth century? It begins with a survey of the contemporary global distribution of light followed by an excursion into the history of night, early efforts at interior and exterior illumination, and the global diffusion of light and power companies aided by foreign investment. The spread of the automobile vastly expanded the market for nocturnal illumination just as the economies of scale associated with electricity generation drove down the unit cost of lumens. The paper concludes by emphasizing light as a form of human cultural expression by stressing the importance of social systems, political and cultural factors in turning the lights on, and off.

AbstractConsumer capitalism dominates western society and most North American youth recognize the centrality of consumption and the resources it requires. As expected, many of them complain that they do not have the financial resources a contemporary teenage lifestyle requires. A shortage of funds may therefore increase the attractiveness of crimes that provide a financial return. Several theories of offending suggest that crime should decrease as adolescents' financial resources increase; yet, other approaches argue that money should have the opposite effect and predict that crime will increase with income. A third perspective maintains that economic resources have no effect on juvenile crime. We argue that economic capital plays an important role in crimes that provide a financial return, and that other factors condition this relationship. We also maintain that measurement issues compromise previous analyses of the effect of adolescent resources on offending. Our research indicates that a logged measure of adolescent resources (income and allowance) is negatively associated with involvement in theft and that gender and class condition this relationship: increases in economic resources appear to have the greatest consequences for offending among males and youth from the unemployed class. These findings suggest that financial resources play an important role in the genesis of crime, particularly among those groups that are most vulnerable to offending.

Relatively new in the Quebec sociopolitical landscape, the notion of social acceptance is being gradually considered as a prerequisite for successful major infrastructure projects. Developers must demonstrate that impacted populations agree with their endeavour. Municipal elected representatives—and mayors in particular—are directly concerned by these dynamics, which are not without contradicting tensions. On the one hand, developers pressure the mayor to support their project and use their political leadership to actively promote it. On the other hand, citizens expect their mayor to remain neutral and favour the common good. All in all, mayors seem ill-equipped to consider projects and their stakeholders from a public good perspective, and to manage these processes with complete objectivity, especially when important financial compensations are involved. Based on the plural notion of legitimacy, we study these dynamics through the case of the development of a windmill farm in Saint-Valentin (Montérégie, Québec), which we compare to a project aimed at enlarging a landfill facility in Saint-Thomas (Lanaudière, Québec). In light of those two cases, we put forward that participatory mechanisms should be handed over to municipal elected representatives in order to develop a shared vision for planning their territory, within which future projects could be presented and discussed. We add that this vision should rely on the consideration of all the stakeholders' points of view on a given territory.

AbstractThe usual definition of social movement refers to activists and organizations, more or less structured in networks, which developed concerted actions in favour of a claim, more or less defined. Whatever the theoretical background considered, social movement organisations are presented as distinct from political parties. Political parties are playing in the electoral arena and are the main actors of institutional politics. In that respect, political parties and social movements are known to interact, but they are supposed to play in two distinct fields : institutional political representation for political parties and social protests for social movements. Yet, the border between institutional and extra-institutional politics is very permeable. In this article, we argue that, in certain social movement configurations, political parties could be an integral part of the social movements from which they emerge, and could even constitute central actors. Our analysis is based on the sovereinist movement in Québec and the study of its transformation through the last 40 years. We show how the Parti québécois and the Bloc québécois are at the centre of the sovereinist movement and still contribute to the definition of a movement that goes beyond their own organisations.

The aim of this research is to understand, within the institutional field of French retailing, the carbon strategies that are implemented by integrated retailers such as Auchan, Casino and Carrefour. By combining the Boltanski and Thevenot polity model with the neo-institutionalist approach, we examine both the discourses and the practices that deal with low-carbon energy. These theoretical analyses are then used to understand the actual behaviours as well as the effective strategies that are initiated by retailers in respect of low-carbon activities. Finally, we discuss the place the integrated retailers grant to the wider issue of climate change.

Keywords: sobriété carbone, grande distribution, théorie des cités, néo-institutionnalisme, analyse de discours, low-carbon, retailers, polity model, neo-institutionalism, discourse analysis, baja emisión de carbono, grandes distribuidores, teoría de las ciudades, neo-institucionalismo, análisis del discurso

Emerging fields offer an opportunity to study how actors are making sense of their environment. In this article, we adopt a discursive approach to examine the discourses about uncertainty. These discourses produced by state and non-state actors are particularly interesting as they participate in the emergence of the institutional framework. We study the discourses produced during a public inquiry led in 2009 and 2010 in the nascent French nanotech field to observe the use of discourses to influence understandings and meanings. We found that ambiguity is used differently according to the positions of actors in the field and that the rhetoric of uncertainty targets different goals.

Keywords: incertitude, ambiguïté, analyse de discours, champ émergent, nanotechnologies, uncertainty, ambiguity, discourse analysis, emerging field, nanotechnologies, incertidumbre, ambigüedad, análisis discursivo, campo emergente, nanotecnologías