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Essal: How Far is a Sociology of Organizations Still Needed?

Groupe d'analyse des politiques publiques, CNRS, Ecole normale superieure de Cachan, and INSEAD, France

Any scientific discipline experiences a life cycle. As a specific discipline, the sociology of organizations may well have reached a stage of maturity and entered a declining return of the knowledge process. This is clearly the case with what might be called its standard platform or agenda of research. A major change in recent years has been the emergence of an extended platform or domain. This raises the question: Does this emergence renew the core identity of the discipline or does it dilute the sociology of organizations as a specific discipline? This essai discusses the ambiguity of such a redefinition of the domain ground. It also calls for a more solid and interactive dialogue between general sociology and sociology dealing with organizations.

Key Words: sociology of organizations • sociology of knowledge • science life cycles • general theory

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