Le quadrilatère de Desroche appliqué à l’entreprise d’ESS : nouvel exercice de géométrie coopérative

The four corners of Desroche’s quadrilateral represent four different populations: managers, administrators (board of directors), employees, and members. This model was designed in 1976 to describe the specific way that cooperatives function and to capture their internal dynamics. This article describes how these population categories, along with internal functions and projects, can all contribute to a structure’s democratic equilibrium. Drawing on observations of around sixty cooperatives and associations established under the Law of 1901, the author proposes a new way of understanding the dysfunction within contemporary social and solidarity economy enterprises. This reading is based on the pathological quadrilaterals that describe the dynamics within certain associations, SCOPs, CAEs, and SCICs, and the author also suggests strategies for bringing these quadrilaterals back into balance.