Abstract

During its ten years of existence, CARSUD, a firm in New Caledonia, experienced, an initial period rife with labor disputes between local Oceanian employees and a management from France, and then an astonishing renaissance under the leadership of a young, inventive manager, who succeeded where his predecessors had foundered. Two in-house surveys, conducted five years, apart are used to formulate a cultural explanation of this strange turnabout by analyzing the reinterpretations local employees made of the contrasting forms of management that they successively experienced.