Coopérative et rapport au travail : le cas d’une CAE

The business and employment cooperative (coopérative d’activités et d’emploi or CAE) provides support for the self-employed starting their own businesses. As such, the particular characteristics of the CAE should have an effect on these self-starters – on their competences and their professional identity in particular – in their unique capacity as an entrepreneur-employee and, more generally, alter their relationship to work. In the first part, this article introduces the literature on the CAE, the generic profiles of entrepreneurs, their competences and their professional identity. In the second part, an exploratory survey in one of these cooperatives is presented, which contradicts certain aspects in the review of the literature.