Questioning Fields’ Boundaries: The Case of the French Business School Field

This paper addresses some questions that arose through a socio-historical research on a group of French business schools from the late 19th to nowadays. Drawing on statistical data, archives and interviews, I have tried to analyze the evolution of these institutions using the concept of field. Considering these school as part of various fields (field of French higher education, field of “grandes écoles”, field of management education) helped overtake both an heteronomous vision of these schools evolution (as a result of external “social” demands) and an internalist perspective giving those schools to much autonomy. Yet, this approach in terms of field appeared to be quite problematic insofar as the question of boundaries was raised. According to Bourdieu, it is not possible to define a priori the boundaries of a field, and since their very definition is a source of struggle within the field, they must be found by assessing the existence of field effects. However, this seemed insufficient to carry out an empirical investigation of organizations such as the French business schools, involved in various fields. First of all, one must take into account the direction of the field effects. To give an example, a leader institution (e.g. HEC for the French business schools) can have effect on really small schools, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Secondly, depending on what is at stake, the boundaries of the field can vary (as underlined by McAdam and Fligstein through their definition of “strategic action fields”). Another series of questions arises when confronting the bourdieusian concept of field to the “organizational field” as defined by DiMaggio and Powell. While the former would only comprehend the business schools, the second includes “key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies”, e.g alumni associations, the State, students, accreditation agency etc.