Emmanuel Lazega

bio

Emmanuel Lazega’s research contributes to the development of a neo-structural sociology that brings together organisational analysis and social network analysis to understand how collective action works. This approach observes, models, articulates, and compares the generic social processes of meso-level social life (e.g., particularistic solidarities and exclusions, socialisation and collective learning, social control and conflict management, regulation and institutionalisation) in order to better understand how contemporary “organisational society” functions at the meso level.

He has developed this approach at the intra- and inter-organisational levels, as well as at both levels simultaneously. For example, he studies forms of collective action between peers (particularly in the relational networks and infrastructures of collegial organisations) and their multi-level intersections with contemporary bureaucracy. This research is grounded in empirical fieldwork in organisations, markets, and institutions for lawyers, judges, researchers, priests, and sales representatives, among others. He also studies cooperation between competitors (i.e., joint and multi-level regulation of markets and business). This theoretical and analytic framework is used—among other ends—to study how the borders between private and public sectors shift, and how private actors are increasingly taking the place of public authorities in many areas of economic and social life.

This neo-structural approach is made possible by interdisciplinary collaborations with network statisticians, among others, and by creating models that allow for a robust and reliable analysis of complex data— for example, in the field of multi-level network dynamics.

Website: http://elazega.fr/

Publications

• Lazega, E. (2020), Bureaucracy, Collegiality and Social Change: Redefining Organizations with Multilevel Relational Infrastructures, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishers. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02526244
• Lazega, E. (2001), The Collegial Phenomenon: The Social Mechanisms of Cooperation Among Peers in a Corporate Law Partnership, Oxford, Oxford University Press
• Lazega, E. (1992), Micropolitics of Knowledge. Communication and Indirect Control in Workgroups, New York, Aldine-de Gruyter. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01800260
• Lazega, E. & Snijders, Tom A.B. (Eds)(2016), Multilevel Network Analysis for the Social Sciences: Theory, Methods and Applications, Cham: Springer https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01495096
• Favereau, Olivier & Lazega, E. (Eds) (2002), Conventions and Structures in Economic Organization: Markets, Networks, and Hierarchies, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. 
  https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00198852

All publications 

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Sciences Po

• Organizational Sociology (undergraduate programme)
• Relational Capital and Social Capital (Master’s programme in Sociology, with Philipp Brandt)
• Organization Theory, Networks and Globalization (School of International Affairs)
• Sociology of Social Networks (Master’s programme)

OTHER ACTIVITIES 

• Codirector of Edward Elgar Publishers’ Social Networks, Organizations and Markets series (with Rafael Wittek and Tom Snijders)
• President of the European Academy of Sociology (2015 - present)
• Member of the journal Social Networks’ editorial board (2007 - present)

Awards and Honours

2018

Georg Simmel Prize, International Network for Social Network Analysts

2003 & 2016
Senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France

2003 - 2004
Wiarda Award and Wiarda Chair Professor, Faculty of Law, Utrecht University

EDUCATION

1994
Habilitation (professorial thesis) University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (guarantor: Alain Chenu)

1988 - 1991
Postdoctoral fellow, then Lecturer in Sociology, Yale University
Specialisation in quantitative methods, intra- and inter-organisational network analysis, and economic sociology

1988 - 1989
Post-doctoral fellow, then Lecturer in Sociology, Columbia University
Specialisation in quantitative methods, intra- and inter-organisational network analysis, and economic sociology

1986 - 1988
Visiting graduate student and research assistant, Wolfson College, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University
Specialisation in sociology of professions


1988
PhD in Economic and Social Sciences, University of Geneva (advisor: Christian Lalive d'Epinay)