Le pilotage chemin faisant : émergence des modes de gouvernance et de pilotage des pôles de compétitivité

By 2004, the French government initiated a cluster policy called « Pôles de compétitivité ». These poles aim at improving the industrial competitiveness thanks to innovation and cooperation between local actors (Research – Industry –Education). Actors still have to think though the schemes for governing and managing the clusters yet. Our thesis study the emergence of these governance and management schemes, in four clusters that show variety in term of context, sector and objectives. We assume these poles are meta-organization (refering to Ahrne and Brunsson recent book published in 2008) that is to say, they are associations of autonomous organisations, that get together for some common purpose. We examine what the organizational properties of these poles are : fluid participation, blurred organizational boundaries, decentralised structure, and how those characteristics influence the construction of a governance system. We also look at the pole’s organizational practices to manage collective actions and services. We then highlight the influence of stakeholders on the management practices and tools, and on the theories of action.