L’identité d’entreprise

Drawing from his ethnographic field study of the Groupe Caisse d’Épargne (French Savings Bank) between 2003 and 2007, and on his research into the managerial practices of repeated references to the Bank’s historical character, the author analyzes the staff’s sense of social acceleration and institutional decline, with a focus on the underlying issues of identity. He then moves on to analyze the way management responded to this display of feeling. The staff challenged the management’s response less in terms of its content and more in terms of a process centred on multiple involvements