Event-based construction of career and reputation – CaNoE

The labor market deregulation and the growing professional mobility make visibility and renown necessary to reach some occupational status. Reputation becomes a key principle of hierarchical organization. Events represent gathering places for professionals, notably when those ones are independent or looking for an international career. They provide great opportunities for professionals who rarely see their competitors or colleagues to meet together. Market exchanges, networks, careers and professional groups are built there. By focusing the analysis on these key moments, the CaNoÉ project helps to understand in a new way the current evolutions of career paths and occupations, as well as the role of events in terms of reputation. This stake is all the more important since the event sector is a growing and strategic sector in France. It generates almost 8.5 billion euro per year (Atout France, 2012) and France is the fourth most important host country for international conventions.
The CaNoÉ project is built around three main lines of reflections:
- Individual career and reputation: How do events affect professional careers?
- Career and reputation of occupational groups: How do events contribute to the structuring of professions?
- Career and reputation of events: How does the reputation of events themselves contribute (or not) to configuring individuals careers and professions?
To answer those questions, we will study three sectors in which events may play different roles: sectors that are in the process of internationalization (international food festivals, international economic conferences, and Global Editors Network Summit); sectors in which competition is evolving (funeral homes, film festivals) and emerging sectors (series festivals, transmedia forum and wedding fairs). The research will investigate eight fields with various degrees of internationalization, competition and institutionalization.
The project will be carefully coordinated and it will develop mix methods: qualitative, quantities and based on documentaries. An ethnographic study will be based on semi-directive interviews (with participants and organizers) and observations. Careers will also be studied from a quantitative approach (sequential analysis) in order to identify the role of events in trajectories. The analysis of data archives will allow us to reconstitute events' careers and to create a database of participants. Finally, a digital corpus analysis will be crucial to understand how professionals use events in order to construct their visibility and reputation.
This research is conducted by eight researchers – sociologists, political scientists, and organizational scientists. They have complementary skills that will be employed to understand the complex role of events in careers and occupations’ dynamics. This research will deepen the knowledge of the event sector which mingles political as well as economic stakes. As such, the CaNoÉ project will be of interest to both researchers and political and economic agents.