Caught in the crossfire of orders of worth: a failed attempt by a small business to reconfigure a French public sector

Abstract

Tentative marketizations of formerly non-marketized areas generate tensions between antagonistic ‘orders of worth’ defined by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006). Although much of the literature explores how institutional actors act collectively to reconfigure public sectors, this article aims to investigate what role a small business can play in such a context. A case study approach was used, including participant observation, interviews and secondary source data collection, to examine the underlying causes of private entrepreneurship's failure to reconfigure the French defense sector. The negative influence of frictions between the civic and commercial orders of worth on the use of unsolicited proposals by a small business is presented as a major cause of the failure. Even if new regulations provide the impression of the public sector becoming more open toward marketization, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) must be wary: the civic order which had dictated public sector decisions for decades cannot disappear in an instant: it takes time! In fact, good faith unsolicited proposals made by small businesses are not even taken into consideration by the relevant contracting authorities.