The literature has largely tended to consider organizations as distinct from societal processes and institutions, and to emphasize convergent and 'culture-free' elements of organization. By cross-national comparisons of closely matched factories in France, West Germany, and Great Britain, this paper shows that more pervasive differences exist than are usually recognized. Organizational processes of differentiation and integration can be seen to consistently interact with processes of educating, training, recruiting, and promoting manpower, so that both develop within an institutional logic that is particular to a society, and bring about nationally different shapes of organization. Organizational differences can thus be considered as linked to different extents and dimensions of professionalty. Comparisons show that a multidimensional concept of professionality is called for, in contrast to the one-sided emphasis on the social status and formal knowledge dimension usually found in the literature.

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In order to shed light on the advantages and disadvantages of three comparative approaches (functionalist, culturalist and societal), a typology is established on the basis of two questions : a) to what extent does each approach examine the linkage between the micro and macrolevels ? and b) is a hypothesis formulated about the continuity, or discontinuity, of the phenomena between various lands ? The characteristics and prospects of societal analysis are indicated. By using a vast range of examples of "national coherence", the ambition of this type of analysis is to stake out the way toward a more general theory.

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