Half a century of French organizational sociology: methodological roots, compositionist branches

Now that 50 years have gone by since the publication of The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (French title: Le phénomène bureaucratique, 1963) by Michel Crozier, what is the legacy bequeathed by the sociology of organizations, in France and elsewhere, to today’s researchers? This contribution considers the premises of this methodology in order to establish two important achievements: the “decomposition” of the notions of organization, State and market; and the distinction of three dimensions of organizations, i.e. their managerial discourse, formal and informal structures. This article ends by considering one contemporary challenge this tradition of research has to face: how to account for the mechanisms of collective action, in order to take part in its composition?