egosSandra CHARREIRE-PETIT et Alexis POKROVSKY participated to the 32nd EGOS Colloquium 2016, in Naples from July 7th to July 9th 2016.

Alexis POKROVSKY presented his paper: Confronting power and building legitimacy through space appropriation: Henri Lefebvre’s space production to the rescue of food trucks.
Abstract:
This paper questions the role of space in shaping institutions, referring to Henri Lefebvre conception of “production of space”, as described in his book “La Production de l’Espace” (1974). The production of space main feature is its ability to reproduce embedded or existing power relationships, through the combination of three modes of spatiality: experience, conception and representation. Our research investigates about agency in this production process: does purposive action enable to change the rules of the game? What modes of action change the distribution of power? The research is empirical, consisting of a qualitative case study of a group of food trucks in their attempt to appropriate portions of public space in order to develop a food business venture. Our results confirm the role of space as a resource integrated in the mode of production, and its potential for agency. However, because of intense competition between stakeholders and the status of the abstract space monitored by the State, institutional resistance is high and appropriation opportunities are largely delegitimized. First, the conception of space by public authorities is driven by a complex scaffolding of powers and a blurred knowledge of some city areas, in particular peripheral areas. As a consequence, the selection process of food trucks by the public authorities is governed by institutionalized taken for granted scripts. Second, food truck entrepreneurs see space as a resource of substitution for missing financial capital, a vision largely stimulated by their past experience and cognitive skills; however, due to asymmetrical properties of space, and the uncertainty associated with it, their main objective is to gain legitimacy through proximity management, in order to stabilize access to the spatial resource. Third, space is not as transparent as it seems at first hand: in the process of production of space, as described by Lefebvre, resulting in a formal abstraction, issues such as violence or domination, although hidden, drive relationships between individuals. Our paper confirms the relevance of the theory developed by Lefebvre, its applicability to the field of organization studies, and provides an invitation to improve the conceptual model, in a period when place and spatial attributes, turning into key social attributes, govern power relationships.
 
Sandra CHARREIRE-PETIT presented a paper co-written with Rachel Bocquet and Sandra Dubouloz entitled: Internal actors’ roles in driving managerial innovation adoption: toward distributed leadership.
Abstract :
This article seeks to open the black box surrounding managerial innovation (MI) adoption processes in organization. Existing understanding of MI has been limited to technology-based innovation models and a rational perspective that neglects social aspects. With both cultural and institutional perspectives, this study explores the role of internal actors and seeks to expand understanding of the transition across different phases in the MI process. In a review of the adoption and adaptation of employee-driven innovation (EDI), as a practical form of MI, over a five-year period by EDF’s Hydraulic Engineering Centre, this article reveals that EDI still has not been successfully routinized at the intra-organizational level. Results show that many discrepancies between rhetoric and reality and embody various types of misfit (political, cultural, technical, and structural) lead to unfavorable conditions for appropriating new managerial and organizational practices. They even can serve as serious impediments to MI adoption. Therefore, MI must be managed in a distributed manner, such that top and middle management, together with employees, serve differentiated and interdependent roles that in combination ensure the success of MI adoption processes.