Strategies for Change: The Future of French Society Book

Although Crozier's specific focus in this book is on the workings and nonworkings of French society, the essence of his analysis is valid for all advanced societies in their search for revitalization and strategies for change. Indeed, his opening chapter addresses "The Crisis of Western Society" and its increasing complexity, uncertainty, and anarchy, and later passages in the book will strike American readers as pertinent to their own recent and ongoing political debates.

The Future of French Society expresses a spirited opposition to the practices and goals of the bureaucracy-its enthusiasm for indiscriminate regulation, its passion for monopolizing power, its craze for self-aggrandizement and special privileges. It identifies the three main sources impeding change in French society: the systems of education, public administration, and recruitment of leaders. The book then proposes strategies for change that are strictly anti-utopian and self-limiting, thus avoiding the opposing extremes of centralized technocracy and revolution.

Michel Crozier is Director of the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations in Paris, and one of the world's leading authorities on modern social organization. The book is the second volume in the MIT Press Series on Organization Studies, edited by John Van Maanen.