Academic literature on the topic 'Clubs de rugby – France – Gestion'

Summary The first direct contact with rugby was made by young men from Serbia during the First World War, after retreating through Albania, watching matches of French and English soldiers. During 1916, some 3,500 Serbian boys were sent to France and the United Kingdom to study. During their education at lyceums, colleges and universities, they were given the opportunity to play various sports, including rugby union. In keeping with their interest and quality, the Serbian boys quickly became involved in the school teams. Most Serbian boys actively participated in playing rugby in three Scottish cities - Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. Their interest in the sport was so much that in Edinburgh and Glasgow they formed special teams made up only of Serbs who played matches with other school teams. The highlight of dealing with Serb rugby in Scotland was the performance by the boys of the George Heriot School at the Rugby 7 tournament on March 9, 1918 in Edinburgh and a victory over the British Colonies selection. This performance can be considered the first appearance of a sports team under the name of Serbia on the international stage. After the end of World War I and the return to the homeland, some of the young men who became acquainted with rugby in France and the United Kingdom actively participated in academic and sports life in their homeland and the result was the establishment of two rugby clubs, in Sabac and Belgrade.

En s’inscrivant dans le cadre des approches néo-institutionnelles, cette contribution s’intéresse à l’influence exercée par les réseaux patronaux sur la diffusion des pratiques managériales, à travers l’exemple de la gestion des compétences dans les entreprises françaises. La littérature permet d’envisager les organisations d’employeurs comme des réseaux sociaux ayant un impact sur les politiques RH des entreprises, et l’étude du développement de la gestion des compétences permet d’étayer l’hypothèse d’une institutionnalisation sous influence patronale de cette pratique de gestion.Pour proposer une évaluation de ce lien, nous nous appuyons ensuite sur une méthodologie quantitative permettant de croiser l’appartenance de membres de la direction d’une entreprise à des réseaux patronaux et la diffusion des pratiques de gestion par les compétences. Les données utilisées sont issues de l’enquête Réponse réalisée par le Ministère du Travail, et ont été collectées auprès de 3000 établissements. Cette approche permet dans un premier temps de procéder à un succinct mais inédit état des lieux des réseaux patronaux en France, puis de mesurer l’impact de l’appartenance à ces réseaux sur la mise en oeuvre de la gestion des compétences.Les résultats montrent que près des trois quarts des établissements appartiennent à des réseaux patronaux ou bien les fréquentent, mais que derrière ce constat initial se cache une réalité multiforme et plutôt concentrée. Nous montrons ensuite que l’appartenance à des réseaux patronaux est bien un élément explicatif important du choix de mise en oeuvre d’une politique GRH orientée vers les compétences, et en particulier la participation à des clubs de DRH ou associations d’entrepreneurs. Les structures patronales les plus influentes apparaissent donc ici comme celles qui reposent davantage sur l’adhésion volontaire, la recherche de légitimité et l’échange d’outils et d’idées.

I called your producer on the way here in the car because I was very excited. I found out … I did one of those genetic testing things and I found out that I'm 63 percent Irish … I had no idea. I had no idea! I thought I was Scottish and Welsh. It turns out my parents are just full of shit, I guess. But now I’m Irish and it just makes so much sense! I'm a really good drinker. I love St. Patrick's Day. Potatoes are delicious. I'm looking forward to meeting all my cousins … [to Conan O’Brien] You and I are probably related! … Now I get to say things like, “It’s in me genes! I love that Conan O’Brien; he’s such a nice fella.” You’re kinda like a giant leprechaun. (Reese Witherspoon, Tuesday 21 March 2017)IntroductionAs an Irishman and a football fan, I watched the unfolding 2016 UEFA European Championship in France (hereafter ‘Euro 2016’) with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Although the Republic of Ireland team was eventually knocked out of the competition in defeat to the host nation, the players performed extremely well – most notably in defeating Italy 1:0. It is not the on-field performance of the Irish team that interests me in this short article, however, but rather how Irish fans travelling to the competition were depicted in the surrounding international news coverage. In particular, I focus on the centrality of fan footage – shot on smart phones and uploaded to YouTube (in most cases by fans themselves) – in this news coverage. In doing so, I reflect on how sports fans contribute to wider understandings of nationness in the global imagination and how their behaviour is often interpreted (as in the case here) through long-established tropes about people and places. The Media ManifoldTo “depict” something is to represent it in words and pictures. As the contemporary world is largely shaped by and dependent on mass media – and different forms of media have merged (or “converged”) through digital media platforms – mediated forms of depiction have become increasingly important in our lives. On one hand, the constant connectivity made possible in the digital age has made the representation of people and places less controllable, insofar as the information and knowledge about our world circulating through media devices are partly created by ordinary people. On the other hand, traditional broadcast media arguably remain the dominant narrators of people and places worldwide, and their stories, Gerbner reminds us, are largely formula-driven and dramatically charged, and work to “retribalize” modern society. However, a more important point, I suggest, is that so-called new and old media can no longer be thought of as separate and discrete; rather, our attention should focus on the complex interrelations made possible by deep mediatisation (Couldry and Hepp).As an example, consider that the Youtube video of Reese Witherspoon’s recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien chat show – from which the passage at the start of this article is taken – had already been viewed 54,669 times when I first viewed it, a mere 16 hours after it was originally posted. At that point, the televised interview had already been reported on in a variety of international digital news outlets, including rte.ie, independent.ie., nydailynews.com, msn.com, huffingtonpost.com, cote-ivoire.com – and myriad entertainment news sites. In other words, this short interview was consumed synchronously and asynchronously, over a number of different media platforms; it was viewed and reviewed, and critiqued and commented upon, and in turn found itself the subject of news commentary, which fed the ongoing cycle. And yet, it is important to also note that a multiplicity of media interactions does not automatically give rise to oppositional discourse and ideological contestation, as is sometimes assumed. In fact, how ostensibly ‘different’ kinds of media can work to produce a broadly shared construction of a people and place is particularly relevant here. Just as Reese Witherspoon’s interview on the Conan O’Brien show perpetuates a highly stereotypical version of Irishness across a number of platforms, news coverage of Irish fans at Euro 2016 largely conformed to established tropes about Irish people, but this was also fed – to some extent – by Irish fans themselves.Irish Identity, Sport, and the Global ImaginationThere is insufficient space here to describe in any detail the evolving representation of Irish identity, about which a vast literature has developed (nationally and internationally) over the past several decades. As with other varieties of nationness, Irishness has been constructed across a variety of cultural forms, including advertising, art, film, novels, travel brochures, plays and documentaries. Importantly, Irishness has also to a great extent been constructed outside of Ireland (Arrowsmith; Negra).As is well known, the Irish were historically constructed by their colonial masters as a small uncivilised race – as primitive wayward children, prone to “sentimentality, ineffectuality, nervous excitability and unworldliness” (Fanning 33). When pondering the “Celtic nature,” the renowned English poet and cultural critic Mathew Arnold concluded that “sentimental” was the best single term to use (100). This perception pervaded internationally, with early depictions of Irish-Americans in US cinema centring on varieties of negative excess, such as lawlessness, drunkenness and violence (Rains). Against this prevailing image of negative excess, the intellectuals and artists associated with what became known as the Celtic Revival began a conscious effort to “rebrand” Ireland from the nineteenth century onwards, reversing the negatives of the colonial project and celebrating Irish tradition, language and culture (Fanning).At first, only distinctly Irish sports associated with the amateur Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) were co-opted in this very particular nation-building project. Since then, however, sport more generally has acted as a site for the negotiation of a variety of overlapping Irish identities. Cronin, for example, describes how the GAA successfully repackaged itself in the 1990s to reflect the confidence of Celtic Tiger Irishness while also remaining rooted in the counties and parishes across Ireland. Studies of Irish football and rugby have similarly examined how these sports have functioned as representatives of changed or evolving Irish identities (Arrowsmith; Free). And yet, throughout Ireland’s changing economic fortunes – from boom to bust, to the gradual renewal of late – a touristic image of Irishness has remained hegemonic in the global imagination. In popular culture, and especially American popular culture, Ireland is often depicted as a kind of pre-industrial theme park – a place where the effects of modernity are felt less, or are erased altogether (Negra). The Irish are known for their charm and sociability; in Clancy’s words, they are seen internationally as “simple, clever and friendly folk” (98). We can identify a number of representational tropes within this dominant image, but two in particular are apposite here: ‘smallness’ and ‘happy-go-luckiness’.Sporting NewsBefore we consider Euro 2016, it is worth briefly considering how the news industry approaches such events. “News”, Dahlgren reminds us, is not so much “information” as it is a specific kind of cultural discourse. News, in other words, is a particular kind of discursive composition that constructs and narrates stories in particular ways. Approaching sports coverage from this vantage point, Poulton and Roderick (xviii) suggest that “sport offers everything a good story should have: heroes and villains, triumph and disaster, achievement and despair, tension and drama.” Similarly, Jason Tuck observes that the media have long had a tendency to employ the “vocabulary of war” to “hype up sporting events,” a discursive tactic which, he argues, links “the two areas of life where the nation is a primary signifier” (190-191).In short, sport is abundant in news values, and media professionals strive to produce coverage that is attractive, interesting and exciting for audiences. Stead (340) suggests that there are three key characteristics governing the production of “media sports packages”: spectacularisation, dramatisation, and personalisation. These production characteristics ensure that sports coverage is exciting and interesting for viewers, but that it also in some respects conforms to their expectations. “This ‘emergent’ quality of sport in the media helps meet the perpetual audience need for something new and different alongside what is familiar and known” (Rowe 32). The disproportionate attention to Irish fans at Euro 2016 was perhaps new, but the overall depiction of the Irish was rather old, I would argue. The news discourse surrounding Euro 2016 worked to suggest, in the Irish case at least, that the nation was embodied not only in its on-field athletic representatives but more so, perhaps, in its travelling fans.Euro 2016In June 2016 the Euros kicked off in France, with the home team beating Romania 2-1. Despite widespread fears of potential terrorist attacks and disruption, the event passed successfully, with Portugal eventually lifting the Henri Delaunay Trophy. As the competition progressed, the behaviour of Irish fans quickly became a central news story, fuelled in large part by smart phone footage uploaded to the internet by Irish fans themselves. Amongst the many videos uploaded to the internet, several became the focus of news reports, especially those in which the goodwill and childlike playfulness of the Irish were on show. In one such video, Irish fans are seen singing lullabies to a baby on a Bordeaux train. In another video, Irish fans appear to help a French couple change a flat tire. In yet another video, Irish fans sing cheerfully as they clean up beer cans and bottles. (It is noteworthy that as of July 2017, some of these videos have been viewed several million times.)News providers quickly turned their attention to Irish fans, sometimes using these to draw stark contrasts with the behaviour of other fans, notably English and Russian fans. Buzzfeed, followed by ESPN, followed by Sky News, Le Monde, Fox News, the Washington Post and numerous other providers celebrated the exploits of Irish fans, with some such as Sky News and Aljazeera going so far as to produce video montages of the most “memorable moments” involving “the boys in green.” In an article titled ‘Irish fans win admirers at Euro 2016,’ Fox News reported that “social media is full of examples of Irish kindness” and that “that Irish wit has been a fixture at the tournament.” Aljazeera’s AJ+ news channel produced a video montage titled ‘Are Irish fans the champions of Euro 2016?’ which included spliced footage from some of the aforementioned videos. The Daily Mirror (UK edition) praised their “fun loving approach to watching football.” Similarly, a headline for NPR declared, “And as if they could not be adorable enough, in a quiet moment, Irish fans sang on a French train to help lull a baby to sleep.” It is important to note that viewer comments under many of these articles and videos were also generally effusive in their praise. For example, under the video ‘Irish Fans help French couple change flat tire,’ one viewer (Amsterdam 410) commented, ‘Irish people nicest people in world by far. they always happy just amazing people.’ Another (Juan Ardilla) commented, ‘Irish fans restored my faith in humanity.’As the final stages of the tournament approached, the Mayor of Paris announced that she was awarding the Medal of the City of Paris to Irish fans for their sporting goodwill. Back home in Ireland, the behaviour of Irish fans in France was also celebrated, with President Michael D. Higgins commenting that “Ireland could not wish for better ambassadors abroad.” In all of this news coverage, the humble kindness, helpfulness and friendliness of the Irish are depicted as native qualities and crystallise as a kind of ideal national character. Though laudatory, the tropes of smallness and happy-go-luckiness are again evident here, as is the recurrent depiction of Irishness as an ‘innocent identity’ (Negra). The “boys” in green are spirited in a non-threatening way, as children generally are. Notably, Stephan Reich, journalist with German sports magazine 11Freunde wrote: “the qualification of the Irish is a godsend. The Boys in Green can celebrate like no other nation, always peaceful, always sympathetic and emphatic, with an infectious, childlike joy.” Irishness as Antidote? The centrality of the Irish fan footage in the international news coverage of Euro 2016 is significant, I suggest, but interpreting its meaning is not a simple or straightforward task. Fans (like everyone) make choices about how to present themselves, and these choices are partly conscious and partly unconscious, partly spontaneous and partly conditioned. Pope (2008), for example, draws on Emile Durkheim to explain the behaviour of sports fans sociologically. “Sporting events,” Pope tells us, “exemplify the conditions of religious ritual: high rates of group interaction, focus on sacred symbols, and collective ritual behaviour symbolising group membership and strengthening shared beliefs, values, aspirations and emotions” (Pope 85). Pope reminds us, in other words, that what fans do and say, and wear and sing – in short, how they perform – is partly spontaneous and situated, and partly governed by a long-established fandom pedagogy that implies familiarity with a whole range of international football fan styles and embodied performances (Rowe). To this, we must add that fans of a national sports team generally uphold shared understandings of what constitutes desirable and appropriate patriotic behaviour. Finally, in the case reported here, we must also consider that the behaviour of Irish fans was also partly shaped by their awareness of participating in the developing media sport spectacle and, indeed, of their own position as ‘suppliers’ of news content. In effect, Irish fans at Euro 2016 occupied an interesting hybrid position between passive consumption and active production – ‘produser’ fans, as it were.On one hand, therefore, we can consider fan footage as evidence of spontaneous displays of affective unity, captured by fellow participants. The realism or ‘authenticity’ of these supposedly natural and unscripted performances is conveyed by the grainy images, and amateur, shaky camerawork, which ironically work to create an impression of unmediated reality (see Goldman and Papson). On the other hand, Mike Cronin considers them contrived, staged, and knowingly performative, and suggestive of “hyper-aware” Irish fans playing up to the camera.However, regardless of how we might explain or interpret these fan performances, it is the fact that they play a role in making Irishness public that most interests me here. For my purposes, the most important consideration is how the patriotic performances of Irish fans both fed and harmonized with the developing news coverage; the resulting depiction of the Irish was partly an outcome of journalistic conventions and partly a consequence of the self-essentialising performances of Irish fans. In a sense, these fan-centred videos were ready-made or ‘packaged’ for an international news audience: they are short, dramatic and entertaining, and their ideological content is in keeping with established tropes about Irishness. As a consequence, the media-sport discourse surrounding Euro 2016 – itself a mixture of international news values and home-grown essentialism – valorised a largely touristic understanding of Irishness, albeit one that many Irish people wilfully celebrate.Why such a construction of Irishness is internationally appealing is unclear, but it is certainly not new. John Fanning (26) cites a number of writers in highlighting that Ireland has long nurtured a romantic self-image that presents the country as a kind of balm for the complexities of the modern world. For example, he cites New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who observed in 2001 that “people all over the world are looking to Ireland for its reservoir of spirituality hoping to siphon off what they can feed to their souls which have become hungry for something other than consumption and computers.” Similarly, Diane Negra writes that “virtually every form of popular culture has in one way or another, presented Irishness as a moral antidote to contemporary ills ranging from globalisation to post-modern alienation, from crises over the meaning and practice of family values to environmental destruction” (3). Earlier, I described the Arnoldian image of the Irish as a race governed by ‘negative excess’. Arguably, in a time of profound ideological division and resurgent cultural nationalism – a time of polarisation and populism, of Trumpism and Euroscepticism – this ‘excess’ has once again been positively recoded, and now it is the ‘sentimental excess’ of the Irish that is imagined as a salve for the cultural schisms of our time.ConclusionMuch has been made of new media powers to contest official discourses. Sports fans, too, are now considered much less ‘controllable’ on account of their ability to disrupt official messages online (as well as offline). The case of Irish fans at Euro 2016, however, offers a reminder that we must avoid routine assumptions that the “uses” made of “new” and “old” media are necessarily divergent (Rowe, Ruddock and Hutchins). My interest here was less in what any single news item or fan-produced video tells us, but rather in the aggregate construction of Irishness that emerges in the media-sport discourse surrounding this event. Relatedly, in writing about the London Olympics, Wardle observed that most of what appeared on social media concerning the Games did not depart significantly from the celebratory tone of mainstream news media organisations. “In fact the absence of any story that threatened the hegemonic vision of the Games as nation-builder, shows that while social media provided an additional and new form of newsgathering, it had to fit within the traditional news structures, routines and agenda” (Wardle 12).Obviously, it is important to acknowledge the contestability of all media texts, including the news items and fan footage mentioned here, and to recognise that such texts are open to multiple interpretations based on diverse reading positions. And yet, here I have suggested that there is something of a ‘preferred’ reading in the depiction of Irish fans at Euro 2016. The news coverage, and the footage on which it draws, are important because of what they collectively suggest about Irish national identity: here we witness a shift from identity performance to identity writ large, and one means of analysing their international (and intertextual significance), I have suggested, is to view them through the prism of established tropes about Irishness.Travelling sports fans – for better or worse – are ‘carriers’ of places and cultures, and they remind us that “there is also a cultural economy of sport, where information, images, ideas and rhetorics are exchanged, where symbolic value is added, where metaphorical (and sometimes literal, in the case of publicly listed sports clubs) stocks rise and fall” (Rowe 24). There is no question, to borrow Rowe’s term, that Ireland’s ‘stocks’ rose considerably on account of Euro 2016. In news terms, Irish fans provided entertainment value; they were the ‘human interest’ story of the tournament; they were the ‘feel-good’ factor of the event – and importantly, they were the suppliers of much of this content (albeit unofficially). Ultimately, I suggest that we think of the overall depiction of the Irish at Euro 2016 as a co-construction of international news media practices and the self-presentational practices of Irish fans themselves. The result was not simply a depiction of idealised fandom, but more importantly, an idealisation of a people and a place, in which the plucky little people on tour became the global standard bearers of Irish identity.ReferencesArnold, Mathew. Celtic Literature. Carolina: Lulu Press, 2013.Arrowsmith, Aidan. “Plastic Paddies vs. Master Racers: ‘Soccer’ and Irish Identity.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.4 (2004). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367877904047864>.Boards and Networked Digital Media Sport Communities.” Convergence 16.3 (2010). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856510367622>.Clancy, Michael. Brand New Ireland: Tourism, Development and National Identity in the Irish Republic. Surrey and Vermont: Ashgate, 2009.Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.Cronin, Michael. “Is It for the Glamour? Masculinity, Nationhood and Amateurism in Contemporary Projections of the Gaelic Athletic Association.” Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture. Eds. Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 39–51.Cronin, Mike. “Serenading Nuns: Irish Soccer Fandom as Performance.” Post-Celtic Tiger Irishness Symposium, Trinity College Dublin, 25 Nov. 2016.Dahlgren, Peter. “Beyond Information: TV News as a Cultural Discourse.” The European Journal of Communication Research 12.2 (1986): 125–36.Fanning, John. “Branding and Begorrah: The Importance of Ireland’s Nation Brand Image.” Irish Marketing Review 21.1-2 (2011). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://www.dit.ie/media/newsdocuments/2011/3%20Fanning.pdf>.Free, Marcus. “Diaspora and Rootedness, Amateurism and Professionalism in Media Discourses of Irish Soccer and Rugby in the 1990s and 2000s.” Éire-Ireland 48.1–2 (2013). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/510693/pdf>.Friedman, Thomas. “Foreign Affairs: The Lexus and the Shamrock.” The Opinion Pages. New York Times 3 Aug. 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/03/opinion/foreign-affairs-the-lexus-and-the-shamrock.html>.Gerbner, George. “The Stories We Tell and the Stories We Sell.” Journal of International Communication 18.2 (2012). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2012.709928>.Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford Press, 1996.Negra, Diane. The Irish in Us. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.Pope, Whitney. “Emile Durkheim.” Key Sociological Thinkers. 2nd ed. Ed. Rob Stones. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 76-89.Poulton, Emma, and Martin Roderick. Sport in Films. London: Routledge, 2008.Rains, Stephanie. The Irish-American in Popular Culture 1945-2000. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007.Rowe, David, Andy Ruddock, and Brett Hutchins. “Cultures of Complaint: Online Fan Message Boards and Networked Digital Media Sport Communities.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technology 16.3 (2010). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856510367622>.Rowe, David. Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2004.Stead, David. “Sport and the Media.” Sport and Society: A Student Introduction. 2nd ed. Ed. Barrie Houlihan. London: Sage, 2008. 328-347.Wardle, Claire. “Social Media, Newsgathering and the Olympics.” Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 2 (2012). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://publications.cardiffuniversitypress.org/index.php/JOMEC/article/view/304>.

La professionnalisation des sports gagne l'ensemble des activites de haut niveau. Entendue comme une transformation economique organisationnelle et culturelle, elle a rencontre dans le rugby a xv de profondes resistances. Depuis la naissance de la coupe du monde (1987) le processus a connu une acceleration brutale, perceptible dans tous les clubs de l'elite europeenne. A partir de l'etude de cinq clubs (deux anglais, deux francais, un ecossais) et en utilisant un modele d'analyse inspire par la sociologie de l'action organisee (crozier, friedberg) nous avons mis en evidence les formes particulieres prises par la contradiction fondamentale qui traverse tous ces clubs. La reference a la tradition developpee dans un cadre associatif s'oppose aux exigences d'efficacite portees par une logique entrepreneuriale. La maniere dont ces contradictions sont assumees dans chacun des clubs a ete mise en evidence a partir d'une etude des strategies des acteurs principaux de ces clubs. Les processus de legitimation passent par un jeu avec les aspects culturels specifiques a chaque organisation. Cette approche permet une lecture originale des rapports de pouvoir.

"La professionnalisation est entendue comme une transformation économique, organisationnelle et culturelle. Dans le rugby à quinze, elle a rencontré de profondes résistances, nombreux étant ceux qui pensaient que ce sport devait rester l'emblème du sport amateur. Les clubs de rugby se trouvent confrontés à une alternative. Conserver au sein d'une même entité organisationnelle, culturelle et historique que représente " le club ", deux logiques somme toute contradictoires, une logique sociale, basée sur la tradition associative, et une logique de recherche de l'excellence sportive et commerciale, fondée sur le développement de son secteur professionnel. Bien que ces deux logiques apparaissent formalisées clairement au travers de structures juridiques bien différenciées, association d'une part et société commerciale d'autre part, il n'en demeure pas moins qu'elles évoluent au sein d'une même entité organisationnelle qu'est le club identitaire. L'objectif de notre recherche en sciences sociales consiste à dresser un état des lieux du niveau de professionnalisation des clubs de rugby, à analyser les enjeux liés à ce type d'organisation humaine et de fonctionnement et à examiner les stratégies de pérennisation de cette orientation dans le rugby de haut niveau. "
Professionalization can be understood as a change in economic, organizational and cultural terms. Rugby union has strongly resisted this process, with a strong faction holding to the belief that it should remain the emblem of amateur sport. Elite Rugby clubs are now confronted with au dilemma. How are they to maintain within a single organisational, cultural and historic entity, symbolised by “the club”, two clearly contradictory systems, one social, based on the associative tradition, and the other which seeks sporting and commercial excellence, based on the development of the professional sector ? Although these two systems are apparently clearly formalised through very distinct legal structures – association on the one hand and commercial partnership on the other – it is nervertheless true that they coexist within the same organisational entity, “the club”. The objective of this social sciences research consists in setting down the current state of affairs in the professionalization of rugby clubs, and to analyse what is at take in this kind of social grouping and function. It also considers the strategies which might consolidate this tendency in top level rugby

L’histoire de l’institutionnalisation du rugby en France a entraîné ce sport vers l’établissement d’un ensemble de règles permettant de définir, et donc de rendre possible, la pratique. Ces règles portent essentiellement sur le jeu, l’établissement d’un classement mais aussi les statuts des clubs, ainsi que leurs interactions. L’institutionnalisation du rugby s’est effectuée au gré d’importantes mutations que sont, la création de fédérations mais aussi, et depuis 1995, le passage au professionnalisme. Après un siècle à s’être fermement opposée à l’idée que le rugby puisse basculer dans l’ère d’une pratique associée à la profession, les institutions en place ont finalement cédé face à la pression grandissante des acteurs (médias, sponsors et joueurs) en demande de « professionnalisation ». L’enjeu d’une telle mutation est que le rugby puisse enfin être considéré comme activité économique à part entière. La professionnalisation a entraîné les acteurs à ne plus considérer l’activité sportif « rugby » de la même manière. Autrefois profondément ancré dans l’amateurisme, le rugby est aujourd’hui devenu un support essentiel à la « production spectacle » rémunératrice. Les structures sportives se sont adaptées au professionnalisme en adaptant leurs statuts mais aussi et surtout en définissant leur nouveau « business model ». Dans le cadre de l’analyse de la stratégie des clubs, la maximisation de la performance sportive, impactant l’institution du classement auquel se rattache le club, est un élément clé. Les clubs, dans un souci d’optimisation de leur business model, ont progressivement intégré l’utilisation des outils technologiques et l’exploitation des données qui en découlent. Ce travail tente d’analyser les facteurs d’adoption et d’appropriation des technologies dans le cadre de la performance des clubs, au sein du championnat élite en France : le Top14
The history and institutionalisation of rugby in France has led to the establishment of a set of rules that make it possible to define, and thus make possible, the practice of rugby. These rules focus on the game, the establishment of a ranking, but also on the status of clubs and their interaction. The institutionalisation of rugby has made it possible for major changes in the way rugby is played, with the creation of federations and the transition into professionalism in 1995. After a century of resolute opposition to the idea that rugby could shift into an era of professional practice, the institutions in place finally accepted the need to change from the growing pressure from players (media, sponsors and players) to professionalise. The challenge of such a change is that rugby can finally be considered as an economic activity in its own right. Professionalisation has led to players no longer considering "rugby" in the same way. Formerly deeply rooted in amateurism, rugby has now become an essential support for a profitable entertainment product. The sports structures have adapted to professionalism by adapting their statutes but also, above all else, by defining their new business model. In analysing club strategy, maximizing sports performance is a key element, impacting the ranking institution to which the club belongs. The clubs, in an effort to optimize their business model, have gradually integrated the use of technological tools and the exploitation of the resulting data. This work attempts to analyse the factors of adoption and appropriation of technology in the context of club performance, within the elite league in France: the Top14

L'objectif de cette thèse est de mettre en relation deux éléments caractéristiques des sports collectifs professionnels : la nomadisation croissante des carrières et la stratégie marketing des clubs qui tendent de plus en plus à devenir des marques. D'un point de vue théorique, cette recherche s'appuie, d'une part, sur la stratégie classique de marque et d'image qui, appliquée au club sportif professionnel, permet de définir le concept de « club marque » et, d'autre part, sur le courant des carrières nomades. Grâce au croisement de ces deux dimensions, émerge la question de l'influence de la stratégie de marque des clubs sportifs professionnels sur la volatilité des ressources humaines dans le sport spectacle. Emblématiques de ce dernier, le football et le rugby français constituent le terrain de la recherche. Deux cas sont étudiés : le FC Grenoble Rugby et l'Olympique Lyonnais. En recourant à une méthode qualitative et exploratoire (entretiens semi-directifs, analyse de contenu), les discours des acteurs des deux clubs choisis permettent de débattre des trois propositions de recherche, d'envisager les implications managériales à la fois pour le club et pour le joueur et, enfin, d'élaborer une typologie des joueurs nomades qui favorise l'appréhension du caractère subi ou voulu de la mobilité
The object of the present thesis is to establish the relationship between two characteristic features of professional collective sports: namely the rise in boundaryless careers and marketing strategies in sports clubs which are increasingly becoming brands. From a theoretical point of view, the research is based on the one hand on traditional brand and image strategy which, when applied to professional sport clubs, outlines the concept of "brand-clubs", and, on the other, on the development of boundaryless careers. At the intersection of these two dimensions comes the question of what influence professional sports club marketing strategy has on the volatility of human resources in entertainment sports. French soccer and rugby, as illustrative examples, constitute the basis for the research through the following two case-studies : "FC Grenoble Rugby" and "Olympique Lyonnais". Applying both qualitative and exploratory methods (semi-directive interviews, content analysis) and drawing on the comments made by actors from both clubs, the three research proposals can be discussed, managerial implications for both club and players explored and a typology of boundaryless players developed in view of assessing the volontary or compulsory character of such mobility

L’objet de ce travail de recherche est de s’interroger sur la dialectique entre la professionnalisation et la mondialisation du rugby à XV et l’évolution des ancrages territoriaux qui en découle, en fonction du modèle sportif qui est propre à chaque terrain d’investigation sélectionné : la Bretagne, le Munster et la Géorgie. L’enjeu est de démontrer dans quelle mesure la professionnalisation des organisations et des acteurs sportifs est le moteur à la fois de la globalisation rugbystique et de nouvelles logiques oligopolistiques de différentiation territoriale du rugby, aux différentes échelles spatiales. S’étant diffusée au sein des championnats domestiques amateurs, cette professionnalisation provoque des dynamiques au profit des territoires sportifs les plus compétitifs et les mieux intégrés au reste du monde rugbystique globalisé, tout en étant le vecteur d’identités territoriales spécifiques. Le choix des trois terrains d’enquête résulte de la pertinence de s’interroger sur l’articulation entre les modèles sportifs et les ancrages territoriaux pour appréhender chaque modèle de production d’espace rugbystique, et sur les formes spécifiques d’ancrage territorial de la pratique du rugby, en considérant celui-ci comme un médiateur territorial. Pour chaque terrain d’enquête, tout en procédant par itération, la mise en oeuvre de la méthode de la triangulation permet d’approfondir et de mettre à l’épreuve les concepts mobilisés. Trois grandes approches de l’analyse socio-spatiale du sport sont privilégiées : l’approche structurelle, l’approche systémique, et celle qui donne de l’importance au rôle des acteurs
The aim of this research work is to wonder about the dialectic between the professionalization and the globalization of the rugby union, and the evolution of the resulting territorial anchorages, depending on the specific sporting model of the investigation lands that have been selected: Brittany, Munster and Georgia. The issue is to demonstrate to what extent the professionalization of the organizations and the sporting actors is at the same time the driving force of the rugby globalization and of new rugby territorial differentiations’ oligopolistic logics, on various levels in geographic terms. Being diffused into the domestic amateur championships, this professionalization stimulates dynamics in favor of the much competitive sporting territories and the best integrated to the rest of the globalized world, while being the vector of specific territorial identities. The selection of the three investigation lands stems from the relevantness of the interrogation on the link between the sporting models and the territorial anchorages to comprehend each model of rugby territorial production and the specific forms of the territorial anchorage of the rugby practice, considering this sport as a territorial mediator. For each investigation land, while proceeding by iteration, the triangulation method implemented allows to go deeper and to test the concepts that have been mobilized. Three major socio spatial analysis approaches have been focused: the structural approach, the systemic approach and the approach that highlights the actors’ role

Cette recherche vise a une analyse reflexive et prospective sur les nuances et caracteristiques du contexte crisologique du rugby de clocher sur le languedoc, en conciliant l'histoire sacree des "clubs" et l'avenement de la modernite avec de nouvelles structures : "les ententes, les unions et les regroupements". Au plan epistemologique, cette recherche s'appuie sur la systemique, afin de restituer l'action particuliere de chacune des parties du systeme (comite du languedoc, clubs, ententes, supporters, presse) dans le tout. Dans un premier temps, il s'agit d'admettre comment un changement structurel (les clubs qui se metamorphosent en ententes) a declenche une evolution socioculturelle sous l'impact d'effets agreges (perte d'identite, evaporation d'un rugby de proximite et des derbys), et a provoque la crise. [. . . ] les resultats demontreront dans une temporalite etablie (1980/2001), comment les decisions de "mutation structurelle" prises par un groupe d'affilies (superieurs aux clubs en 2002) concomitantes aux actions institutionnelles "disciplinaires et reglementaires", sous "l'effet janis", ont fait basculer le systeme dans une evolution socioculturelle inattendue (destructuration du championnat, desenchantement du public et de la presse). La these de cette recherche concluant a un rugby de differences (clubs/ententes) generatif d'un rugby d'indifferences.

"Longtemps géré par des bénévoles dans un cadre amateur, le sport a connu, au cours du XXème siècle, une marchandisation progressive de son activité. Le rugby a longtemps maintenu, de manière souvent artificielle, les règles d'un amateurisme de plus en plus désuet. En 1995, l'arrivée "annoncée" du professionnalisme a boulversé les modes de gestion du rugby en France. Avec de nouvelles compétitions, de nouvelles structures (ligues, syndicats), des budgets en forte hausse, des salaires élevés et une médiatisation accrue, le rugby est devenu une activité économique d'importance. Mais cette évolution s'est accompagnée aussi d'effets pervers (études sacrifiées des étudiants-rugbymen, joueurs au chômage, budgets en déficit ou même gestion "délictueuse"), que les institutions en charge du rugby professionnel ont pour vocation à résoudre rapidement. La comparaison avec les sports professionnels aux USA et le décryptage d'un certain nombre d'études économiques proposent au rugby frabçais des hypothèses de travail qu'il convient d'étudier soigneusement. Ces propositions financières, administratives et sportives sont susceptibles de favoriser la réussite économique du rugby professionnel. "

Deux objectifs sont attachés à notre recherche. Le premier consiste à mesurer le degré de formalisation des systèmes de données de gestion repères au sein des clubs sportifs, à savoir le système de données comptable, le système de données administratif, le système de données sportif et le système de données en relation extérieure. Une étude quantitative par voie postale auprès de 47 clubs sportifs et une observation participante au sein d'un club de rugby de division nationale révèlent : - que les systèmes de données de gestion présentent une formalisation hétérogène et chaotique, fortement liée aux stratégies disparates d'acteurs multiples ; - que l'analyse des relations entre le degré de formalisation et les facteurs d'ordre structurel et/ou comportemental n'a fait apparaitre globalement aucun lien significatif. Toutefois certains indices nous laissent penser que l'acteur joue un rôle déterminant.

Dans cette recherche, nous proposons de repenser les rapports entre culture et personnalité sous l'éclairage nouveau du genre et du style qui concilie les impératifs collectifs et la possibilité d'une expression personnalisée. La méthode utilisée propose deux plans d'analyse, un niveau d'analyse microsociologique et un niveau d'analyse psychologique, et prend appui sur les verbalisations de différents acteurs (Président, Entraîneurs, Joueurs) du rugby au sein de plusieurs clubs de la région Aquitaine. Nous démontrons que l'action du sportif n'est pas l'expression d'une commande mais d'un style à l'intérieur d'un milieu qui possède des contraintes génériques. Sur le plan de l'intervention, il convient donc de favoriser l'appropriation de genres techniques socialement accumulés et de développer l'importance de l'élaboration intersubjective dans le partage de l'expérience (avant, pendant et après le jeu)
In this research, we offer to take au new look at the relationship between culture and personality under the new light of type and style, which combines the requirements of the collective and the possibility of a more personal expression. The method chosen provides us with two levels of analysis, a microsociological analysis and a psychological analysis, and is based on the verbalisation of the different stakeholders involved in rugby (chairman of the club, coach, players) within various clubs of the Aquitaine region of France. We show that the player's action is not the expression of an order but rather of a style within an environment characterized by generic constraints. As far as interventions are concerned, it is therefore recommended to favour the appropriation of socially accumultated technical types and to enhance the role of intersubjective development in expression sharing (before, during and after the game)

Cette thèse porte sur la professionnalisation des dirigeants bénévoles dans deux organisations sportives fédérales. Notre intention est de démontrer que ce processus se traduit par une technicisation accrue des responsabilités fédérales qui tend à reléguer en périphérie l'amateur et à diluer la culture bénévole traditionnelle. Nous voulons aussi montrer qu'à travers la professionnalisation, c'est une nouvelle génération de dirigeants bénévoles qui s'affirme. Son engagement militant est plus réaliste et transforme le modèle associatif en un modèle managérial d'entreprise et l'éthique sportive en une déontologie professionnelle. A une époque où nous observons une dépolitisation massive et une désyndicalisation importante de la population, doit-on voir dans ce nouveau militantisme les conséquences de ce "désenchantement du monde" qui, dans le milieu sportif comme partout ailleurs, se traduit par la montée des individualismes et la perte des grandes utopies ?
This thesis is about the professionalisation of voluntary leaders in two federal sports organisations. Our intention is to prove that professionalisation results in the increased technicalisation of federal responsibilities which tends to relate amateurs to a secondary role and to dilute traditional culture of voluntary work. We also want to show that because of this professionalisation there is a new generation of volontary leaders asserting themselves. Their commitment is more realistic, transforming the associative model into a managerial business model and the sports ethic into a professional code. At a time when we notice the masses turning away from politics and tradeunionism, should we see in this new militancy the consequences of people's disillusionment, which in the world of sport as everywhere else, results in the rise of individualism and the fading of great ideals ? Those are the evolution of voluntary work in sport and more globally of modern associative militancy

The third chapter deals with the wholesale importation of a British team sport, rugby, into France. Led by Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the Olympics, who was the referee in the first French championship, its adoption by the French was a self-conscious response to defeat in the Franco–Prussian War. Choosing rugby over the more proletarian soccer, an haute-bourgeois and aristocratic elite played rugby at Paris’ most exclusive clubs, a moment reimagined by Henri Rousseau. But rugby could not be confined to these environs for long, and by the time of Delaunay’s The Cardiff Team, with its press photograph source, the sport was included alongside aeroplanes, the Eiffel Tower and advertising as a cipher of all that was modern in the Paris of 1913. Also on view at that year’s Salon des Indépendants was another picture of rugby, The Football Players, cementing the sport as a theme for salon cubism. During the First World War, rugby was celebrated by French nationalists as a sport that had trained its participants to become heroes on the battlefield. This, I surmise, is what led André Lhote to produce his cubist paintings of rugby during and after the conflict.

Roland Barthes constantly complained about being overwhelmed with requests and importunities; people were always sending him texts to read, and strangers would write or phone for appointments, articles, and advice. What he called the burden of administration (‘la gestion’) took up as much of his time as creative work. And he entertained the dream of a Vita Nova, liberated from supplications. The decision of ‘15 April 1978’, recorded in La Préparation du roman, was a revelation: henceforth, all of his life would be concentrated around literature – the novel – and he would switch to an ex-directory phone number. Yet Barthes, at the same time, loved the pressure of demands; he was addicted to the flow of requests and could not work without the stimulus of commissions and deadlines. In fact, as he well knew, most of what he produced started out as a commission (whether a ‘demande’ or a ‘commande’), right from the very first articles in Combat and his many contributions to book clubs. All through his life the pressure of writing for journals never ceased: Existences, Esprit, Théâtre populaire, Lettres nouvelles, L’Observateur or France-Observateur; later Critique, Communications, Tel Quel… This is the paradox to be explored in this chapter.