pp. 553-585

Firms are being confronted with a new type of international standard, for management and quality assurance, in order to promote in these organizations standardized forms of management and coordination, appropriate for greater reliability in inter-industrial exchanges. This observation illustrates the ambivalence of this tool : when used to develop the capacity equivalence of enterprises on the market, it also contributes to a differentiation between firms. This fact makes it necessary to take a different approach as regards the specificity of the procedures used and the way in which they are applied - each time, training is required relative to the number of workers in the firm. Thus standardizing quality also appears as a symbolic representation of what is to be expected from the opening up of markets : instead of jeopardizing local legilsation, opening up markets world-wide in reality will only make local legislation more decisive.