The functioning and impact of different institutional structures and processes of collective voice on firm performance has gained both political and academic interest in recent years. This increase in interest was triggered by the economic crisis of 2008–9, when the ability of some types and structures of collective bargaining to provide flexibility for companies to maintain competitiveness began to be questioned in some countries. Moreover, in a time of high and rising inequality, voice systems that reduce inequality have a greater value than they would in a time of low or falling inequality. Unions, for example, invariably trade off some economic efficiency for the sake of greater justice in the workplace. The proposed research project is a ground-breaking innovative analysis of the mechanism through which employee voice affect firm competitiveness. Going beyond state-of-the-art studies on the economic effects of unions, our analysis of labour relations expands the analysis of employee voice beyond the unions/collective bargaining versus non-union management decision-making dichotomy to examine the changing work arrangements and channels through which workers seek to affect workplace outcomes.

Whether in terms of publications, data or software resulting from research, the issue of open science is finding a growing echo in national and international academic policies, as well as in their implementation by research operators. Nevertheless, humanities and social sciences appear to be lagging behind this movement, including in France, as shown by the French Open Science Barometer. Faced with this observation, this project has two joint objectives: firstly, to gain a better understanding of the explanatory factors, obstacles and potential levers for action relating to the opening up of science in the humanities and social sciences disciplines, and secondly, to experiment - within the framework of action research - with levers for action likely to increase the involvement of humanities and social sciences communities in open science practices. In this context, the Université de Lorraine is positioning itself as an interdisciplinary field of research and hopes to be able to enrich its practices for supporting researchers and to benefit all humanities and social sciences communities in France and internationally.