Links between management tools and collective strategies: an analysis of the transaction between milk producers and processors.

Summary This thesis proposes to analyze the relationships between the appropriation of management tools and the emergence and effectiveness of collective strategies, which have in common that they are two facets of an object specific to management sciences: collective action. We have chosen as our field of study the transaction between milk producers and industrialists in France, which is a particular transaction requiring the use of numerous management tools. The management system that frames the transaction is nowadays strongly questioned. We have approached this field from several angles: a historical approach to the system built by the actors, a case study approach to shed light on the contemporary evolution of this system, and a longitudinal observation approach to the relations between a group of producers and their buyer. We thus show that the mechanisms and strategies are embedded. A national management system is the strategic construction of representatives of the sector's actors. It constitutes the basis of rules that frame the construction of local systems. We show the back and forth between national adaptations of the system and local appropriations of the tools and the strategic designs that accompany this interrelationship. We also show that the power relationships between actors are ultimately preserved. Finally, we show that, if collective strategies emerge at a local level, they do not necessarily correspond to the initial strategic intentions: the horizontal strategic intentions of the producers' representatives, aimed at capturing value, have failed or have been transformed into emerging vertical strategies, aimed at creating value with the buyer. We give two explanations for this phenomenon: 1. the inability of producer representatives to set up a collective structure that would allow them to change the power relationship with their buyer. This is linked to the role played by the buyer in shaping and appropriating the producers' representation tools, and 2. The collective learning that takes place as a result of the appropriation of transaction management tools: this can lead to the recognition of a convergence between the interests of producers and their buyer, and to the construction of new tools to support their common strategy. Thus, management tools are both the means for implementing collective strategies and the catalyst for their emergence.