Timesheets are management tools whose effects are both ambivalent and often underestimated. Drawing on a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews conducted as part of a doctoral research project, this paper shows how such instruments contribute to the reification of managerial work. Mobilizing Lukacs' concept of reification, we provide a detailed analysis of the transformations that timesheets induce in the professional practices of employees working in neo-professional service firms.
In a context of developing intermediate hierarchies in the civil service, we are studying the school management production in the French National Education System, based on an analysis of the training of new entrants in vocational schools. Their "intermediate" hierarchical position gives them a pivotal role, presented as a delicate one, in the functioning of educational establishments. The training consists mainly of developing a hybrid approach: on the one hand, a bureaucratic tradition of respect for hierarchy, law and procedures; on the other hand, a managerial model of autonomy, "leadership" and adaptability, designed to make schools more efficient in achieving the objectives defined by education policies.
This article examines the reconfiguration of managerial work within the French public employment service through the rapprochement between France Travail and Cap emploi. Based on ethnographic research and interviews, it shows how middle managers translate New Public Management injunctions, coordinate hybrid teams and negotiate between distinct professional cultures. Caught between performance pressures, imposed monitoring tools and distance management, managers develop practical adjustments and organizational bricolage to "hold things together." The study highlights institutional power asymmetries and the effects of a quasi-merger on autonomy and professional practices.
The NRT asked three former university presidents to discuss their management practices in higher education and research. Why do they accept the challenge? What are their visions for their roles and actions? The presidents explain how they have drawn on their experience as teacher-researchers or researcher to meet the demands of a mission that straddles different spheres (administrative, political, academic, etc.) and levels (local, national, international).
By challenging the unity of space, time, and action in the workplace, teleworking affects management activities within organizations, especially since the health crisis led to its widespread adoption beyond trusted employees for whom it was traditionally reserved. Teleworking is causing confusion in supervision: it is changing the conditions under which it is carried out and encouraging a shift in focus from the activity being performed to the results of the activity, requiring the implementation of management by objectives and the extension of trust to categories of employees other than managers. However, these changes are neither obvious nor systematic: they do not unfold uniformly depending on the people being supervised and their presumed autonomy, and require managers to do three times as much additional organizational work, which is likely to increase their workload and discourage them from using the system.
Challenging media narratives about a supposed "disaffection" of executives for managerial roles, this article examines the career shifts of elite school graduates to explore how managerial ethos and dispositions are carried into new professional settings. Drawing on thirty biographical interviews, it shows that shifting career does not necessarily mean leaving management. The career changers express varying degrees of distancing from a managerial ethos, which may be confirmed, reformulated, reconfigured or rejected, alongside differentiated patterns of persistence of incorporated dispositions. Depending on the new professional contexts and on a relationship to managerial ethos shaped through successive socialisations, these dispositions circulate, are transformed or become inhibited. Career changes thus appear as a privileged observatory of dispositional circulations across professional worlds.
By examining "what management means" in this corpus, the Nouvelle Revue du Travail aims to explore a subject that has only recently been developed in the sociology of work, having long banned the term "management" from its vocabulary, as it was considered too closely linked to a normative theory designed primarily for use by managers. Now a central category of thought in the contemporary world, management appears as a total social fact that the seven articles in this corpus attempt to grasp by studying the agents and professional groups it involves, the work it accomplishes, the mechanisms and provisions it mobilizes, the functions it fulfills, and the professional experiences and trials it constitutes. This corpus reopens a field of research to be pursued.
A decade after the advent of platform capitalism heralded the decline of traditional management in favour of self-employment, the managerial role remains intact. On the contrary, task assignment algorithms have transformed managerial duties, distributing them more widely and standardising practices. This evolution has also redefined the purpose of management, shifting focus from task evaluation to monitoring worker loyalty. This article examines management practices within a meal delivery company, highlighting the algorithm's impact on the essence of management. Through the narrative of Shorif, a Bangladeshi Deliveroo rider, it delves into the mechanisms of control and the strategies couriers employ to counter the algorithm.
Through raw notes and commentary, the article recounts an unexpected observational situation that challenges certain preconceptions held by the authors. Interviews scheduled at a French nursing health care center gave way to the observation of a training session where salaried nurses were introduced to a management tool. Given how receptive nurses were to managerial logic, our observation raises questions about the ability of health care centers to implement a "social health" model. The managerial approach, introduced by a trainer who is also a selfemployed nurse, is embraced by nurses as a mean to highlight their work and classify patients-not according to their social or moral value, but by financial worth.
The African Workplaces photography exhibition, curated in 2021-2022 by researchers Chloe Josse-Durand and Constance PerrinJoly, showcases the diverse perspectives of nine photographers and academics on labor in Africa (Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania). The exhibition pursues two main objectives: first, to offer a fresh perspective on the daily lives of workers in Africa; second, to explore the boundaries of the "photographable" by fostering dialogue among contributors from varied backgrounds. In an interview with NRT, the two curators and the filmmaker who collaborated with them reflect on their shared experience. They discuss their practices, the choice of equipment, the subjects photographed or filmed, the production conditions of the images and sociological interviews, and the reception of their work by diverse audiences in Africa and Europe. The interview also highlights the concrete modalities of collaborative work between academics and image professionals, their mutual reflexive inquiries, and the heuristic outcomes of this approach.
Established in December 2019, Burkina Faso's National Council of the Informal Economy (CNEI) is the culmination of a process initiated two decades earlier through collective action by small traders' unions. However, when the project finally materialized, its initiators felt sidelined and accused the government of political co-optation. The article demonstrates that, rather than consolidating an autonomous space for representation, the creation of the CNEI resulted in a process of institutionalization and domestication. This process was characterized by the gradual appropriation of the original project and the establishment of a structure largely controlled by public and economic elites. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article explores the mechanisms and stakes of this transformation.
Since the mid-2010s, there has been a resurgence of interest in studies on labour and trade unionism in Africa. This Corpus contributes to this dynamic by bringing together six contributions that examine various sectors and categories of workers north and south of the Sahara. In this presentation of the issue, after reviewing the literature on trade unionism in Africa, the coordinators highlight three avenues for reflection based on these articles. First, the case studies tend to denaturalise trade union organisations in contexts where they face competition from a host of other forms of collective action and modes of representation. They then make it possible to take a fresh look at the classic questions of representation and the structure of trade unions, particularly in situations marked by the fragmentation of statuses and the omnipresence of the "informal sector". Finally, these cases lead us to re-examine the relationship between trade unions and the state in often repressive and authoritarian political contexts. In conclusion, the Corpus coordinators advocate for a comparative sociology of trade unionism, aimed at understanding and highlighting the plurality of its modes of existence and functioning, and for which the comparison is made less on a national scale than on the basis of local sub-national configurations.
The Nouvelle Revue du Travail invited three scholars specializing in labor, workers, and the economy in sub-Saharan Africa to engage in a dialogue on a central theme: the "informal." A social reality, a social science concept, and a category of public policy, the term "informal"- which emerged in the 1970s-has primarily been used to describe economies and labor worlds in the Global South. It has been subject to multiple uses, redefinitions, and critiques. This discussion provides an opportunity to revisit the history of the concept, to question the reasons for its success and circulation, and to assess its heuristic potential beyond the African continent. Ultimately, it offers a chance to examine the conditions under which academic knowledge is produced and disseminated from Africa.
What hardships do railway station workers face in their daily work, and how do they adapt? This article presents the findings of a collective ethnographic study conducted among maintenance staff, security personnel, and ticket inspectors working in a railway station. We offer a crosssectional analysis of the daily adaptations these three categories of workers employ to cope with the challenges they encounter. Our analysis reveals that these adaptations occur on three levels: accommodating physical suffering and the most arduous tasks, defusing or reversing power dynamics in violent interactions with station users, and distancing themselves from the meaning of their work. However, bodily adjustments and emotional adaptations also vary depending on workers' social characteristics, career trajectories, job positions, and potential professional mobility.
This article examines the process that led to the creation of the Union of Cotton and Food Crop Producers in Mali in the early 1990s. This process was made possible by the emergence within the peasantry of a distinct group identifying as cotton producers, who shared common interests to assert vis-a-vis the company overseeing cotton cultivation, the Malian Textile Development Company (CMDT). It was driven by a deteriorating economic context, marked by the country's economic liberalization, and further facilitated by political liberalization following the fall of Moussa Traore's authoritarian regime. Finally, the article focuses specifically on understanding why producers chose a union as the means to represent and defend their interests.
