This research intends to study the response of different organizations to the Covid-19 pandemic, comparing the period from March to May 2020 with the period beginning in October 2020. It will focus on three sets of organizations: 1) Government and central administrations, 2) regional and local institutions, 3) the (socio-)health sector. The interviews conducted will be organized around three thematic entries that will help us to better understand the relationships between the different actors and organizations: 1) protection and prevention measures (masks, lock-down, curfew, isolation and physical distancing) ; 2) the organization of tests and screening (availability and choice of tests, contact cases, applications); 3) the management of patients and populations at risk (in hospital, at home, respiratory equipment, treatments, transportation). This research aims to uncover and analyse the capacities of these organisations to transform themselves or not in a period of uncertainty, by favoring an approach centered on collective action (to analyse the forms of cooperation or conflict that arise during crisis management) and a cognitive approach (which looks at the way in which actors make sense of the crisis and legitimize their actions). By comparing two periods, we will seek to see whether the capacities for cooperation differ according to whether the situation is marked by a high degree of uncertainty, urgency and extraordinary functioning; or, on the contrary, a better knowledge of the risks, less time pressure and a return to ordinary functioning. The goal will be to produce, in addition to fundamental knowledge about organizations in crisis situations, an analysis shared with the actors involved in the management of the crisis in these different organizations, with a view to collective learning.

The institutionalization of programs that signal corporate virtue, usually placed under the heading of “Corporate social responsibility”, is a central feature of the contemporary mutations of capitalism. While most studies focus on CSR discourse and devices, this project offers an innovative take on « responsible capitalism », by placing the lens on its managers, their work activities and their professional milieus. Through its focus on CSR professionals, the ProVirCap project pursues a triple theoretical ambition: 1/ to shed light on the reconfiguration of the borders between the market, the state, and civil society; 2/ to understand the transformations of professionalism in global companies; 3/ and to examine the ways in which gender shapes the virtuous face of capitalism. Carried out by a team of nine researchers renowned for their expertise on various management fields associated with CSR, the project will benefit from the cross-fertilization of several analytical perspectives: sociology of work, professions and organizations, economic sociology, political science, management studies, as well as gender studies. The research design combines qualitative (in-depth interviews, observations) and quantitative methods (CV scraping, questionnaire survey), and relies on a double comparison: between management fields associated with CSR (sustainable development, responsible investment, diversity and work quality, human rights, corporate giving, ethics) and between national cases (France, USA, Spain). The close dialogue with an international, interdisciplinary expert committee will anchor the project in a transnational field of research on responsible capitalism. The dissemination of the results among professionals of the sector, beyond academic circles, will help promote social sciences in a field that is particularly receptive to exchanges with academia, and contribute to the reflection around the transformation of capitalism – an issue that, against the background of the Covid-19 crisis, appears ever more vital for contemporary societies.

In France, spending on the financial remuneration of politicians comes in at more than a billion euros in per year. These costs associated with political work are regularly subject to sharp criticism, which accuses elected representatives of costing too much and putting their own financial interests first. The ELUAR project looks to break with common, all-embracing representations and examine in detail the role played by financial remunerations in the process of the professionalization of elected representatives. From a scientific point of view, it seeks to fill in a gap in the French literature about political work. Although many publications have appeared about this subject since the 1990s, the analysis of the material conditions of the exercise of mandates remains a blind sport for research in France. Through an interdisciplinary approach which mobilises sociology, political science, history and law, this collective research project aims to put the financial dimension back at the centre of the analysis of careers and engagements of national and local political personnel. The central hypothesis of the project is to highlight heterogeneity and inequality in the remuneration of elected representatives and in the forms of political professionalization. Practically speaking, the project is structured around two parts. The first part centres around the study of the production of reforms and judicial frameworks in order to bring up to date the political construction of economic hierarchisation between mandates. Which actors are invested in the production of reforms? What registers have been used to justify these reforms since the 1950s? How does the principle of accumulating mandates affect these games? What are the possibilities for remuneration and material gratification open to the politicians? Do the same logics of hierarchisation apply abroad? The second part analyses the uses and appropriations of the rules which frame the remuneration of elected representatives. By focusing on remuneration, and more largely on the material conditions in which mandates are exercised, this study will lead to a better understanding of the variety of contemporary forms of political professionalization, and the subjective relations that the elected representations have with money and the political uses of money. By what processes do elected representatives manage to abandon their initial profession in favour of a political mandate? What strategies of economic reassurance do they deploy? How are allowances and bonuses attributed? Does money win the loyalty of political teams? Is it constructed as a political arm to disqualify an opponent? These are just some of the questions that will be dealt with in the second part. Ultimately, the project ELUAR seeks to make a double break, firstly with ordinary discourses which homogenise elected representatives and are suspicious about remunerations they receive; and secondly with the scholarly point of view visible in research on political work, which posits that compensation makes more or less mechanically the professional.