Yuna Chiffoleau

Chercheurs et viticulteurs partenaires pour l’innovation : interactions, institutions et apprentissages

Abstract Researchers and wine-growers, partners for innovation : interactions, institutions and mutual learning. This article presents a reflexive analysis of the evolution of a partnership between researchers and professionals of the wine sector in Languedoc-Roussillon, within the framework of a research project about wine cooperative firms ability to cope with the current changes. This partnership is seen as a sequence of action systems geared to one another, studied through analytic categories based on the main outputs of structural interactionism and sociology of organisations. Each action system is identified through objects, actors and coordination structures. The evolution of those systems is analysed as a learning process of each actor involved in the partnership, according to his own cognitive project. This learning process enables the progressive delineation of the ways by which partnership develops. Its strengthening and its success depend on a) the shape of the social capital developed by researchers, b) the gearing of autonomous regulation and control. Social capital can be evaluated through the relevance of the content of interactions as well as through the specific array of the structural positions of those involved in them. Those interactions between researchers and other actors of the Languedoc-Roussillon wine sector build an autonomous form of regulation of the system whereas organisations (research institute, firms) frame this autonomy within sets of rules and procedures.

Networks, Innovation and Performance

This paper combines economics and economic sociology to assess the role of local inter-firm networks in innovation dynamics and economic performance in a cluster of cooperatives. Focusing on the exchanges of advice between managers, our study is based on 31 cooperatives in southern France. Using both sociometric and economic data, we find correlations between cooperatives’ relational, innovation and economic scores. The cooperatives’ specificity, however, questions the results obtained in different settings. The network analysis may thus ground a comprehensive interactionist approach to cooperatives, but may also offer tools to renew their governance strategies.