Michel Crozier (6 November 1922, Sainte-Menehould, Marne – 24 May 2013, Paris) was a French sociologist and member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques from 1999 until his death.
The publication of the results of this research (Petits Fonctionnaires au travail) established his reputation as a sociologist of white-collar work and set off a series of new field studies on insurance companies, a big nationalized bank and, last but not least, on the French tobacco monopoly.
In 1977, together with Erhard Friedberg, he published L’Acteur et le système (Actors and Systems, 1981, Chicago University Press), a scientific essay that was highly influential in France and continental Europe.
The way in which organizations and systems function is conceptualized by them as originating from game structures that channel and stabilize power and bargaining relations between a set of strategically interdependent actors.
He never separated his sociological work from his commitment to administrative and social reform,[4] in the service of which he published seven books and engaged in numerous consultancies and interventions.