While Michel Foucault's work has been widely used in management and organizational sciences since the 1980s, the concept of the dispositif, which is central to his work, has remained little used until recently. This article revisits Foucault's conceptualization of the dispositif, explains its recent transposition into management and organizational sciences through "dispositional analysis," presents its analytical value for the study of targeted collective action processes, and offers a conceptual and methodological clarification of the notion of "mise en dispositif" (putting into operation).

Since the beginning of the 21st century, healthcare pathways have become a public policy issue. To support their management, specific interface organizations have proliferated, with mixed results. To understand how such organizations take shape, this article uses the Foucauldian concept of "dispositif" to analyze the creation of an interface organization as part of the Paerpa experiment. It highlights a process operating through successive framings of collective action, top-down and emergent, which are the product of arrangement activities progressively linking heterogeneous elements (discourse, physical spaces, instruments...).

To deal with "wicked problems" in public policy, the experimentation modality is regularly used to understand and assess the value of organizational innovations. To better understand the deployment of experiments in a multi-actor, multi-stakeholder context of public governance, this article uses the theoretical framework of the Foucauldian device to study the implementation of the central measure of an experiment conducted in the field of loss of autonomy among the elderly: territorial support coordination (CTA) in the Paerpa experiment. The processes involved in "setting up the system" are studied in two experimental territories, demonstrating that the deployment of such an experiment moves away from project management towards an ongoing design process based on activities involving the arrangement of heterogeneous elements, distributed between different players and carried out at three levels (institutional, project and operational). The mobilization of the theoretical framework highlights the role of spatial, discursive and instrumental elements, as well as the importance of the activity of articulating the new device to pre-existing ones To address the "wicked problems" of public policy, experimentation is frequently used to understand and assess the value of organizational innovations. To better grasp the deployment of such experiments within a public governance context involving multiple stakeholders and diverse issues, this article draws on the Foucauldian framework of "dispositive" to study the implementation of the central measure of an experiment conducted in the field of elderly loss of autonomy: thenation (CTA in French) within the Paerpa experiment. Processes of "dispositive Education" are studied in two experimental territories. They highlight that the deployment of an experiment diverges from traditional project management, involving a continuous design process guided by the assemblage of heterogeneous elements. This process is distributed among various actors and unfolds across three levels (institutional, project, and operational). The use of this theoretical framework makes visible the role of spatial, discursive, and instrumental elements, as well as the critical importance of integrating the new dispositive with pre-existing ones

Tackling societal and grand challenges requires the collaboration of multiple organizations and actors on a common issue to innovate, which can take the form of so-called 'governance' policies. In the context of collaborative public innovation, governance experiments have become widespread, but are subject to tensions in relation to the articulation between local implementation and wider diffusion and to the articulation of the tight project time with processes of collective action. Drawing on a post-analysis of a major experiment in France to prevent 'avoidable' hospitalizations of frail elderly people, this paper proposes to shed a new light on governance experiment as 'dispositive implementing', articulating the theoretical notion of the Foucaldian dispositive in organization studies with process studies. Through the analysis of the 'dispositive implementing' of a platform that aims to be a single desk to better coordinate elderly care pathways between health and social professionals, the research highlights the variety of elements in the dispositive and that the intensity of the links between them comes from physical aspects, such as co-location, strategic discourse, but cannot be achieved without frequent and close management combining bilateral and collective relations. It also suggests moving away from the dichotomy between design and implementation in experiments towards a more continuous process of concretisation.

Developed in response to the heterogeneity of public actions, players and results, the pathway approach is gradually taking root as a doctrine in French institutions. Our aim is to study the transformation of the administration generated by this doctrine as it is deployed. Our approach is based on multi-actor governance. Our methodology is qualitative, based on a case study (in progress) within a departmental administration. Our results shed light on the importance of complexity (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2016) as a source of slow, long and difficult deployment of the transformation of public action and the administration that implements it.