Constructing an Alternative and Resisting Degeneration: The Case of a Multi-Stakeholder Cooperative in the Field of Regulated Professions

Charlène Arnaud; Pascale Château-Terrisse

doi:10.37725/mgmt.2024.8878

Charlène Arnaud Laboratoire de gestion et des transitions organisationnelles (LGTO), Odycée team, AGIR (UMR 1248), INRAE, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1474-5022
Pascale Château-Terrisse INP Ensat, Odycée team, AGIR (UMR 1248), INRAE, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, Avenue de l’Agrobiopole, Auzeville-Tolosane, France

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.2024.8878

Keywords: Neo-weberian perspective, Degeneration, Multi-stakeholder cooperative, Liberal profession

Abstract

This research is rooted in the recently emerging stream of research on cooperative degeneration that acts as a counterpoint to the initial orthodox approaches and focuses on the processes, conditions, and practices that enable cooperatives to avoid degeneration. This research therefore analyzes a repertoire of practices that constitute an alternative organization and provides us with insight into the organization of work, coordination mechanisms, cooperative practices, and the rights and capacity for expression and decision-making of each individual within FINACOOP, a French multi-stakeholder accounting cooperative (SCIC – société coopérative d’intérêt collective). This makes it possible to assess under what conditions and how the SCIC studied maintains its alternative character, that is, combats the various dynamics of degeneration (of work, organization, and culture). Based on an atypical case study (FINACOOP is the only chartered accountancy firm operating under SCIC status in France), this research makes a significant contribution to the theory of degeneration by improving our understanding of the conditions for the establishment of this alternative that is distinctive in two ways: the fact that it operates within a regulated profession and its multi-stakeholder nature.

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Author Biographies

Charlène Arnaud, Laboratoire de gestion et des transitions organisationnelles (LGTO), Odycée team, AGIR (UMR 1248), INRAE, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

Charlène Arnaud is a lecturer and researcher in management sciences at Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier. Her laboratory (LGTO) conducts research into management and organizational transition. Her early work was rooted in a critical approach to new public management, mobilizing the territory as an operative concept for management sciences. She quickly broadened her field of expertise to include social and solidarity economy organizations, and has been working for several years on multi-stakeholder cooperatives. Her critical and constructive posture enables her to examine alternative organizational forms to capitalist enterprises, to see how different forms of critique and struggle against the dominant model are shaped. Together with Pascale Château-Terrisse, she initiated the SCIC-AGRI research program (co-funded by the French National Research Agency and the French Agency for Ecological Transition), which aims to study the entry of multi-stakeholder cooperatives into the agri-food sector. Since 2022 she has been co-editor-in-chief of the Responsible Organization Review alongside Lovasoa Ramboarisata.

Pascale Château-Terrisse, INP Ensat, Odycée team, AGIR (UMR 1248), INRAE, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, Avenue de l’Agrobiopole, Auzeville-Tolosane, France

Pascale Château-Terrisse is a lecturer in management at INP-ENSAT, researcher at INRAE UMR AGIR in the Odycée team. It develops partnership research on and with social and solidarity economy organizations (SSEO) in various sectors such as solidarity finance, very social housing, renewable energy and agriculture. Her research aims to highlight mechanisms based on management systems and organizational models, with which SSEO respond to the tensions that constitute and cross them, by mobilizing neo-institutional and critical theories in management. She coordinates, with Charlène Arnaud and Célia Auquier, a research program on collective interest cooperative societies in the agricultural field (https://scic-agri.hub.inrae.fr/une-recherche-participative).

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