Marguerite Coron defended her thesis on Tuesday 19 May before a jury comprising Justine Arnoud, external examiner (Professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil), Frédérique Chédotel, external examiner (Professor at the University of Angers), Anthony Hussenot, chair of the examination board (Professor at the University of Nice Côte d’Azur), Cathy Krohmer (Professor at AMU, LEST), Régis Meissonnier (IAE Montpellier), Eddie Soulier (Troyes University of Technology) and Claude Paraponaris (Professor Emeritus at AMU), her thesis supervisor.
Unanimously, the jury described this doctoral work as a genuine thesis and the manuscript as high-quality document.
Marguerite Coron was commended for the high quality of her work, her rigour, her insight and her boldness. The’originality of the perspective adopted was also noted, focusing on the teamwork and technique, two dimensions that are rarely placed at the heart of management research. The richness of the empirical data, the scientific rigour demonstrated and, more broadly, the enthusiasm for research—which is evident both in the manuscript and during the defence—were also highlighted.
The argumentative and teaching skills Marguerite Coron’s findings, presented during the defence, were warmly welcomed by the entire examination board. The members of the examination board also emphasised the potential for academic publications, both in the fields of team management and creativity, organisational theory, and in the field of information systems management.
This doctoral research is situated within an analytical impasse: the difficulty in conceptualising collaborative work in a virtual context beyond a dichotomous view of face-to-face versus remote work, leading to mixed results.
To address this, the research focuses on technology – the role of which remains underestimated in the social sciences – and employs a dual-entry framework: sociotechnical, which focuses on the material manifestations of prescriptions and the scope for appropriation; and sociomaterial, which centres on practices as an interplay between social and material dimensions.
The socio-contextual characteristics of teams (diversity of skills, distribution of authority and stability over time) provide another analytical framework.
The empirical study is based on situations of intensive collaboration – hackathons, both in person and online – and yields a wealth of empirical data. The results are presented under two interdependent headings: «being together» and «doing together», enabling an analysis of both the emergence of a team and the execution of collective work, in relation to technical mediations.
The discussion highlights changes in the way collective work is organised, linked to the constraints inherent in the tools and guided by an organisational «objective», as well as different ways in which team characteristics and formal interdependence are manifested.
