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This article deals with the industrial-league hockey team, the Quebec Aces. Originating as a means of providing entertainment for the workers of a pulp and paper mill, later appropriated by the city and its citizens, subsequently sold to foreign interests, this sports club was, for several decades, a focus of collective pride, first to an entire factory, then to an entire city. This article retraces the path of the Quebec Aces during their twenty-five years of existence, and explains how they became the pride of an entire city.

The evolution of collective bargaining in France since the mid-1990s reveals major transformations in the French System of industrial relations. Remarkable progress in firm-level bargaining has accompanied the proliferation of agreements on employment, which have become a major concern for social partners. These agreements, which link the quantitative management (job creation and social programs, managing fluctuations in both internal and external markets) with the qualitative management of employment (work time management, organization, skills management), are associated with the emergence of a new social compromise, based on the trade-off between employment and multiple forms of flexibility. The French context is traditionally organized along industry lines and characterized by highconflict situations in which actors rebel against local compromises and contractual arrangements. These shifts in the actors' strategies reflect, therefore, a considerable innovation which is examined in this article. Is this change related to new economic imbalance in contractual relations resulting from the decline of workers' power? Or does the employment crisis foster the development of new negotiating practices through which the social partners can explore other levels of action ?Based on a French-Quebec comparative study, this article examines the reconfiguration of social relations in France, drawing on the analysis of employment agreements and observation of real negotiating practices in firms. Our analysis has three main components: (1) examination of the characteristics of these kinds of agreements and their specificity with regard to traditional agreements; (2) examination of the process which leads to these social compromises and its impact in terms of social regulation; (3) understanding the process of mobilization and legitimation through which union actors make sense of these new practices. The firm-level collective agreements on employment are an expression of a series of practical and symbolic shifts in collective bargaining. They are the result of decentralized confrontation/concertation which are closest to local realities; they reflect greater interdependence among social partners in regulating production activity; and they are evolving toward more contractual arrangements. In the French cultural context, the state's influence plays a significant role in this reorientation of collective bargaining practices by legislating measures which encourage and then compel the parties to negotiate about local reorganization of work time. A content analysis of these negotiations supports the hypothesis of a "recodifying of the employment relationship" characterized first by an extension of contractual relations. The issue and exercise of "joint regulation" — in the sense proposee by A. Fox and put into theoretical terms by J.D. Reynaud — focus on the workplaces themselves, inciting union actors to break the "management taboo" in order to turn the productive order into a "negotiated order." The result of this type of negotiation can be defined as the joint elaboration of local legal regulations which link the management of production to the management of the internal labour market. While not ruling out the risk of a power imbalance in which employment bargaining can be a pretext for supporting the introduction of multiple forms of flexibility, the authors highlight the need to be sensitive to the leaming effects associated with this new negotiating dynamic. It gives social partners the opportunity to experiment with new roles within the firm, which then becomes a more political place in which social debate is conducted.The second part of the article addresses the question of the legitimation of these kinds of agreements when they are not directly associated with improvement, to the point of sometimes being equivalent to agreements to "manage sacrifices." Here, the analysis focuses on the way in which the social and symbolic mobilization for employment by union actors is carried out. In particular, it considers the problems encountered by the signatory unions in legitimating their position vis-a-vis their membership. The challenge here is how to reinsert the meaning of their action into the traditional or pertinent symbolic spheres of union action. The rhetoric of solidanty does not have a real significance unless it is embedded in the communities to which workers belong (firm, local area, professional community, etc.). To mobilize workers, the "defence of employment" must be oriented toward a victory, the inverse of a logic of sacrifice which offers much less mobilizing potential. In this way, it is able to re-establish the traditional meaning of union action. Although, for the time being, union leaders are succeeding in constructing the collective meaning of action for employment, the problem of union representation and legitimacy will continue to exist beyond the agreement. As standard bearers for a logic of flexibility and differentiation within work communities, the employment agreements also contribute to the growth of divergent interests and perceptions among the different categories of workers, making it all the more difficult in the end to aggregate and organize interests in such actions.

The shopfloor is receiving renewed attention within the field of comparative industrial relations. This interest reflects academic concerns, notably a wish to understand how new managerial techniques actually function, but also developments in the real world, particularly the competitive challenge of Japan and the perception that it is in the regulation of labour within the workplace that a large part of Japan's success lies. An important but neglected mode of workplace inquiry, the ethnographie tradition, has a major part to play in understanding the shopfloor in comparative perspective. The paper sets out its approach, considers issues of validity and generalization, illustrates its contribution to comparative analysis, and outlines a research agenda for the future.The approach has three key components. The first is its theoretical perspective on the nature of work relations. Conflict is the central principle underlying the organization of work because workers are exploited by employers. This "structured antagonism" underlies day-to-day relations. At this level, cooperation becomes significant. Conflict is not separate from co-operation. The two are intertwined, and the analytical task is to understand how in a particular workplace they are organized and expressed. Second, therefore, the object of inquiry is the regulation of work: the rules, procedures, customs and understandings that regulate how workers' capacity to labour is translated into actual effort. Third, research methods place particular weight on intensive observation, though studies that use relatively casual observation still adopt an ethnographic orientation to the extent that they focus on day-to-day behaviour and the processes by which conflict and consent are organized.Several problems with the approach are commonly identified. One is a tendency to descend into mere description of the drudgery of working lives. A second is that studies of individual workplaces can offer no wider generalizations. The former is a weakness of certain studies, and to develop its potential the approach needs a tightly disciplined consideration of analytical issues. There are five ways in which it can thereby offer generalizations: 1) the excavation of activities that would otherwise lie hidden, together with the demonstration that they question certain theories about organizational functioning; 2) the indication of mechanisms linking different phenomena together; 3) the analysis of single "critical cases" which are able to throw light on wider developments; 4) the use of comparisons of workplaces; and 5) the development of a research programme which permits cumulative knowledge to be generated. International comparisons using ethnographic methods are as yet rare, but four approaches illustrate the potential. The first is simply to explore a country in the light of existing assumptions. For example, the small number of shopfloor studies of Japan help to explode myths about the nature and origins of workers' consent. Second, one country is studied using the perspectives of another. This can ask about processes which tend to be taken for granted within a country and can begin to explain how processes of labour regulation differ, for example what role the strike plays in different national regimes. Third, studies from different countries can be set alongside each other. Where these studies were conducted in similar types of technology and product markets, the distinctive effects of national Systems are revealed. For example, studies of Britain and North America reveal the distinctive roles played by the state in the development of factory regimes. Finally, direct comparison between workplaces can test out and develop ideas derived from more indirect comparisons.Such studies help to explain what remains obscure within existing comparative analyses. For example, the "political economy" tradition tries to explain patterns of labour regulation in terms of the incorporation of labour within national political Systems, and it uses strike statistics as a major index of industrial behaviour. An ethnographic approach goes much deeper than such statistics, and it relates national-level developments to the site where cooperation is actually generated, namely, the workplace. It can thus resolve certain puzzles within existing accounts.There are several ways in which the perspective can develop its comparative contribution. An obvious one is to explore changes in manufacturing industry, looking for example at quality circles in two or more countries and exploring their connections with existing Systems of regulation. There is also a need to extend the approach to little-studied groups such as white-collar workers. The range of countries can also be extended, from the advanced capitalist nations which have generally been the focus, to newly industrializing economics.The tradition has, in view of its marginal place in the social science canon, made several significant contributions in the past. As the workplace gains increasing significance in the pursuit of competitive advantage, its future potential is even greater.

SummarySince the right to preventive reassignment came into force, a rapid and continued growth of demand for this program has been witnessed. The requests forwarded to the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité au travail have led much more often, however, to early withdrawal from work rather than to a process of job reassignment as the designers of the measure had hoped. After reviewing the issues raised by this unexpected result of the legislation, the authors draw up a statistical portrait of users of the program and propose several hypotheses to explain the surprising popularity of the measure, based on the preliminary results of an investigation (using both quantitative and qualitative approaches) conducted with working women who took advantage of this right in 1984 and 1985. They suggest that when designing the measure, the legislators, as well as coming up against the resistance of the workplace generally not disposed to policies of job reassignment, underesl¡mated the unpleasantness of jobs which have been left to women, and consequently the number of workers likely to invoke the risk factor of their jobs.

AbstractA brief historical review of the power structure in Quebec's public school system shows a new power situation, on the one hand for administrators who are favored by a process of bureaucratization of teaching and on the other hand for teachers who are invited by their associations to adher to a profassionalization movement. This situation brings the author to ask the following question : does the professionalization movement influence the teachers to the point of causing a conflict between their professional authority and the administrative authority of school principals ? Referring to studies on the personnel of the elementary schools of the Catholic School Board of Montreal, the author finds that at this level the teachers' reactions are ambivalent : even though they join a professionalization movement which demands status and an affirmation of their authority, their joining doesn't influence their relationship with the Principal's Office to the point of developing a conflict. The author explains this state of affairs by the particularity of elementary education, the continued-traditional concept of authority at this level of education, the type of bargaining and attitudes which caracterizo the ¡participation of groups working within an organization, and finally the rapid change in the Quebec school system in the last decade. Given these explanations, it is possible however that the conflict between professional authority and administrative authority is at present at a minimal point in the elementary schools of Quebec and that at higher levels there: should be more open conflict between teachers and administrators.

This research aims to understand language dynamic and its association with power and socialization within a Qatari subsidiary established in Tunisia. To achieve this goal, we conduct a thematic content analysis based on Bourdieu framework. 14 employees were interviewed and results demonstrate that legitimate language is absorbed differently according to employees' hierarchical level. Furthermore, language training established by the multinational was shown to be ineffective since it has reinforced power imbalances within the subsidiary.

Keywords: Langage, légitimation, pouvoir symbolique, filiales, Bourdieu, Language, legitimation, symbolic power, subsidiaries, Bourdieu, Lenguaje, legitimación, poder simbólico, subsidiarias, Bourdieu

This article questions the budgetary decision of the French local authorities, as a democratic process, faced with the 2008 economic globalization crisis, which turned into a public finances “crisis.” With the involvement of the states, a European “government” of austerity has been established through various reforms. The methodology crosses the (neo)institutional analysis of reforms, the statistical analysis of local budgets, and a survey based on interviews. A typology of concrete budgetary choices shows that the elitist and technocratic models are predominant with regard to the democratic model. Despite the variety of the actors' budgetary plays, the change in local public action is difficult, particularly because of the traditional spending culture within the French local system. These results question the political legitimacy of decentralization, managerial performance, and the representative democracy of proximity.

Keywords: action publique, collectivités locales, finances publiques, décision, démocratie, élite, technocratie, légitimité, crise, austérité, public action, local authorities, public finances, decision, democracy, elite, technocracy, legitimacy, crisis, austerity

This research aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of appropriation of a managerial innovation (MI): the mindfulness at work. To this end, a longitudinal case study over six years was conducted within the French subsidiary of an international group. The results reveal firstly that the “philosophy” component at the heart of the MI, although crucial, fluctuates during the appropriation process, underlining the importance of “practices” to ensure its materiality. The results also highlight the significant influence of socio-political logic in the appropriation of a MI, but above all the dialectic between individual and collective appropriation throughout the process. The multidimensional and processual used considerably enriches our understanding of the appropriation process.

Keywords: Innovation managériale, appropriation, processus, pleine conscience au travail, Managerial Innovation, Appropriation process, Mindfulness at work, Innovación de gestión, proceso de apropiación, en el trabajo