In China, the economic growth of the last twenty years has resulted in a sharp rise in energy demand, making the country the largest consumer in the world. Because of an energy mix dominated by the use of coal and a growing democratization of the automobile, the Chinese economy has to face not only a risk of increased dependence on fossil fuels, but also that of a considerable increase in pollution, leading to the repetition of "airpocalypse" episodes which Chinese cities are already accustomed to. Energetic and ecologic topics have been more and more important in political concerns. The recent five-year plans have supported the necessity to secure energetic provisioning by reducing fossil energy use, and to reduce pollutant emissions by developing low carbon industries. Thus, China is nowadays world leader in solar and wind energy supplying, and invests great amounts in research and innovation for energy purposes. Considering the hypothesis under which China has entered in an energy transition process, the TEChNOPE project aims at characterizing the Chinese energy transition thanks to an interdisciplinary approach (12-member team of scholars whose topics are political economy, environmental economics, urban economics, political science and town planning). As the energy transition is a territorial question, the Chinese energy transition (CET) will be studied at three different geographical levels. At the national level, the CET will be analysed by paying attention to the economic policies (environmental, energy, industrial and innovation) established by the central authorities. The analyses of environmental and energy policies, the technological positioning of China in the energy domain, as well as its role in the international climate negotiations are the main elements to understand whether authorities would change the energy system. At the regional (province) level, the CET can be understood in its whole diversity. By identifying common tendencies, but also main differences between regions, it can be put into evidence different regional trajectories towards energy transition, as well as their determinants. At the urban level, the CET puts the question of « the fabric of the city ». First, some recent urban transformations fear for a sharp increase in energy needs for transport, which leads us to analyse, in a specific and understudied context, the link between urban form and daily mobility. Second, the emphasis on « eco-cities » leads to study the way such a concept has adapted to the specific Chinese urban framework and culture. In a more transversal way, the question of articulation of the scales of governance will be the subject of a particular attention. In China, central power is strong, but the inferior levels manage its directives and objectives. It draws an original multi-level governance, which implies to better understand whether the CET is a product of the dynamic relations that are built between these three scales. TEChNOPE aims before all at producing new knowledge (international publications and communications, but also the set-up of an interdisciplinary research network on Chinese studies), but also at transferring this knowledge towards the civil society.

Over five millions workers are employed in unskilled jobs in France. At the core of socio-productive challenges, they need to cope with environmental changes. However, the ways of building professional pathways are far from certain while they are facing the challenge of taking their own career in hand. This injunction led simultaneously by the policy-making level and management practices is one of the keys to making workers’ career paths more secure and firms more efficient. Our project aims to examine whether or not the conditions provided by firms allow employees to enhance the real capability for professional development and to take their own career in hand. To address this set of questions, it develops an innovative line of research combining a capability approach, a clinical sociology approach and management tools-based approach. The originality of the project lies in the combination of a quantitative longitudinal linked employer-employee survey - The Training and Employee Trajectory Surveys (DEFIS) - a qualitative inquiry in four lines of business (logistics sector, home-care sector, chemical sector and agri-food sector) and intervention-research as a specific way of producing knowledge. By the interplay of these three methodological frameworks, SQUAPIN aims to develop an innovative research perspective. The approach offers both a cross-cutting perspective since the various sectors are contrasted and a compared approach since the research intends to analyse the power to act of workers in low-skilled jobs in relation to that in skilled-jobs. Because power to act does not result from strictly individual inclinations but are shaped by interactions with the environment and the possibilities the latter provides, the research includes three complementary perspectives: institutional, organizational and biographical. As a consequence, it questions at the different scales policies and practices that underpin the call to become “active player of his/her professional pathway”.

The research program COOP-in-and-out is centred on firms organized into Scop (co-operative and participative society) and Scic (co-operative society of collective interest). They are firms characterised by employee participation. Contrary to what happens in conventional firms, workers are also members and take an active part in the management of the firm. Our investigation focuses on the links between this specific internal management and the relationships these firms maintain with external stakeholders. Can the distinctive internal co-operation of the Scop and Scic also be found at the level of their external relationship? The hypothesis can be presumed, considering their observed “inter-cooperation” and their strong territorial presence, giving evidence of the specific relations with some external stakeholders. This leads us to look into the structuring effect of cooperation put forward by these firms on productive and specifically territorial dynamics. A better understanding of the way relations are co-determined between the internal and external stakeholders is important, beyond the specific case of the Scop and Scic. The issue meets with essential stakes for the whole productive system within the context of present changes: on one hand the "disintegration" of the firm highlights the issue of the relationship between firms; on the other hand, the emergence of "knowledge economy” crucially requires the creation of a co-operative co-ordination method between firms, internally as well as externally. The adopted framework of the neo-institutionalist theory of the organizations is suited for this hypothesis of a possible "co-operative boost” of the Scop and Scic within productive systems. It leads us to consider these firms as potential agents of an “institutional work” transformation process, while acknowledging the institutional forces of "isomorphism" they are subject to. A possible feedback effect of the non-co-operative logics upon the internal management is to be considered. The team of 11 researchers mobilised by the program is organised into 3 geographical centres, Grenoble, Lyon and Aix-Marseille, which makes decentralized field work easier. The multidisciplinary approach assures complementary skills and is in keeping with an "institutionalist" theorical framework. Besides, most of the members of the team are integrated into research networks on Social and Solidary Economics and have already led research in that field. The work program is planned in 3 stages: the first one involves a reflexion about the evaluation tools of the firms' internal and external co-operation, which should result in the drawing up of a "synthetic indicator of co-operation”. That reflection starts from a very general grasp of co-operation as co-ordination around a “common good”, with variations for each type of relations. The second stage consists in using those evaluation tools to conduct empirical research based on a crossed observation of Scop, Scic and of the productive systems these societies are bound to. One of the expected final product is a cartography of the “belonging networks” of the studied cases. Finally, the third stage stems from the results of these case studies to build a typology of the integration methods of the Scop and Scip into the productive system according to their co-operation level. At the end of this research program, the expected results aim at proving the interdependence of internal and external types of relationships for firms facing a coherence constraint. The compulsory association of democratization and stimulation of the productive system could thus be confirmed.