REGULATING AND GOVERNING ORGANIZATIONS - FOR A SOCIOLOGY OF MANAGERIAL ACTION

The sociology of managerial action proposed herein differs from the so ciology of organized action based on a principle of autonomy and the s ociology of the firm grounded in the principles of participation and t rust. Instead, the notion of constraint is placed at the center of ana lysis. In increasingly decentralized organizations, the question of lo cally supervising and controlling the principles of governance becomes a key issue. Thus has emerged a contemporary form of governing firms described as ''gentle domination''. A quite real menace, namely market -related constraints, leads to changing the means of management and th e corresponding occupations. Project management is discussed in order to show that certain actors cannot avoid this form of management, whic h entails the ideas of precariousness and success thanks to a ''struct uration'' by external factors, such as codes of ethics or standardizat ion and certification procedures. This new way of governing organizati ons both more deeply involves individuals (to the point that it tends to ''enlist subjectivities'') and shifts part of the work of regulatio n outside the firm.