Michel Crozier's Long March: The Making of The Bureaucratic Phenomenon
| Published date | 01 March 1992 |
| Author | Pierre Grémion |
| Date | 01 March 1992 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1992.tb01757.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1992),
XL,
5-20
Michel Crozier’s
Long
March:
the
Making
of
The Bureaucratic
Phenomenon
PIERRE
GREMION*
Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Paris
Crozier’s
Bureaucratic Phenomenon
was a landmark in the development of both the
sociology of organizations
as
a research approach and the study of French society in
the
1960s.
To
understand its genesis requires an exercise in the history ofcontemporary
thought, locating Crozier’s
magnum
opus
within the context of the influence of
Gouldner, March and Simon. His initial intellectual preoccupation was with the role of
trade unions in the
US
and France during the cold war. This led
to
his main cultural
finding: the fear
of
face-to-face communication. requiring impersonal mediation to
avoid confrontation with those in authority. France required a new style
of
authority
and her intellectuals should provide
it
as a way of dealing with the problem of
overcoming cultural lag and changing France into a modern industrial society.
As
part of the reassessment
of
the development of the sociology
of
organizations
in France,
I
shall be concerned with how Michel Crozier’s
Le PhPnomPne
Bureaucratique
was conceived.
No
one would deny that his book is indispensable
to an understanding of this development and an important reference point for the
political analysis of French society over the last
30
years. My intention is not to
present a
Bureaucratic Phenomenon Revisited,
which would require
a
critical
discussion of the
book’s
intellectual impact on posterity and necessitate reflection
upon the relations between
organizations
and
insritutions.
On the contrary,
I
propose to examine the itinerary adopted and the way Michel Crozier went about
writing his
magnum
opus.
There are two main threads in my investigation. First,
I
want
to
show that what
Michel Crozier meant by sociology of organization was not a branch
of
a
discipline, sociology. Rather, it was a research approach. Secondly,
I
want to
show that owing to this way of undertaking research, an understanding of
The
Bureaucratic Phenomenon
must be based on two different aspects
of
the author’s
achievement (and hence refer to two kinds of text): the researcher and the
intellectual.
The researcher started work in
1952
when he joined the CNRS (Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique) to prepare a thesis on the middle classes
under the supervision
of
Georges Gurvitch.’ Until then, the young academic
*
This article is based upon a paper presented to a seminar organized by the Centre Culture1 de
Cerisy-la-Salle in June
1990
on
Le
raisonnement
de
l’analyse stratgique: autour de Michel Crozier.
It
has
been
translated by Mette MacRae-Willert. The French version will
be
published in
1992
by
Editions du
Seuil
in a book devoted to the seminar.
’
See Michel Crozier, ‘L‘ambiguite de la conscience de classe chez les employes et les petits
0032-32
I7/92/01/0005-16
0
1992
Political
Studies
6 Michel Crozier’s
Long
March:
The
Bureaucratic
Phenomenon
had dabbled in poetry, written a small book on the American trade unions (which
will
be
discussed below) and contributed to fashionable Parisian left-wing
newspapers and periodicals
(Les
Temps modernes. Contemporains, L’Observateur).
When he joined the CNRS, his change of role was accompanied by a change of
intellectual environment: having left the Sartrian world of
Temps modernes
in
1953. he started writing for (the left Catholic)
Esprit.
From the day he entered CNRS until the publication, ten years later,
of
his
book, Crozier carried
out
an impressive empirical sociological research project.
This included investigation of a
centre des cheques postaux
in Paris, several
factories in the public tobacco monopoly (Seita), a bank, some insurance
companies and the Ex-Servicemens Ministry. Each enquiry led to an individual
report (often cyclostyled) or a book,2 but they were mostly reproduced
in
the
two works which the author presented to the University of Paris as
his
doctoral
thesis in the early
1960s.
These were
Le Phknomene Bureaucratique
and
Le monde
des employ& de bureau.’
The first coherent presentation to
a
French audience
of
what Michel Crozier
called
a
‘Sociology
of
Organization’ appeared in 1957.
It
was not published
in
a
professional sociological review but in a high-level periodical on state education,
L’Education N~tionale.~
This text is an indispensable point of reference. In it,
Crozier clearly defines the sociology of organization as a research approach, not
in relation to sociology but in relation to sociological research which in turn
is
considered with reference to industrial society. The position
of
sociology of
organization
is
allusively located somewhere between group dynamics and
cultural anthropology. However, the core of the text is devoted
to
three themes:
the possibility of sociological research, the role
of
the researcher and the place of
research within industrial society. Sociological research, he says, introduces a
break with an approach through general culture (which,
in
a somewhat cavalier
manner, he classifies under the ‘education of princes’) while
at
the same time
offering great scope
for
a new culture based on ‘the understanding of the human
situation in its proper social context’. Thereafter, everything depends on the
researcher’s capacity to establish an approach on the following principles. First,
he must become integrated within an organization and develop a network of
informants. Secondly, he must be able to guarantee total independence between
those in authority and the informants. According to Crozier, the ideal basis
for
sociological research within industrial society is ‘self-study’, where the researcher
works with a group which conducts its own investigation into its own situation.
What can
be
achieved by such an approach? A transformation, he says, of the
‘impassioned way in which human problems are dealt with’ in view of the
intellectually interactive function
of
research. Crozier’s article states that the
application of this approach
is
particularly effective for dealing with two kinds
of
problems: first, large-scale organization (setting objectives, the way different
groups identify with these objectives and the optimal conditions under which the
organization can achieve them); secondly, problems linked to cultural anthro-
pology which ‘appear to be of particular interest in France’. In other words, he is
concerned with all the problems linked to authority, efficiency and collective
pressures in relation to culturally accepted norms.
fonctionnaires’,
Cahiers Internafionaruc
de
Sociologie,
XVIII
(1955), 78-97.
*
Michel Crozier,
Petifs Fonctionnaires au fravail
(Pans, Editions du CNRS, 1955).
’
Michel Crozier,
Le
PhenomPne bureaucrafique
(Pans, le Seuil, 1963)
and
Le
Monde
des
‘
Michel Crozier, ‘Recherche sociologique et societe industrielle’,
L’Educufion Nationale,
3
(Jan.
employPs
&
bureau
(Pans, le Seuil, 1966).
1957). This was the opening article
of
the review.
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