Abstract
This chapter presents the development of convention theory in management sciences since the 1990s. The first part explains the reasons for and sources of inspiration of this current of research. It shows the bifurcation between management and economics research made possible by the recognition of the mimetic dimension of individual rationality. The second part describes the structural model of conventions, which identifies conventions as “information screens” and proposes a systematic description of their content. In particular, this structuralist model makes it possible to analyze the dynamics of conventions, i.e., their transformation over time. The third part presents two major developments in convention theory in management sciences: on the one hand, the effort conventions that govern activity in organizations and the adjustment between workers to implicit norms of “normal” effort and on the other hand, the qualification conventions that govern relations between the organization and its environment (including markets) and determine who is in charge of defining the level of quality in a transaction. The articulation of these two conventions has renewed our understanding of managerial decisions, although promising work remains to be done.