From shorts to dresses: the introduction of new attire in a women’s professional basketball team as an index of change and forms of compromise

Résumé En

In 2010, the Lyon women’s team Lyon Basket Féminin started to appear on court in short tunic-style dresses. Was there a consensus on the desirability of this innovation? What forms of resistance were manifested, if any? Seeking to approach the question from an organisational point of view, we used the model of the economies of worth, focusing on the conduct of change, the appropriation of the new, and the communication that presents and surrounds it. After an explanatory observation, twelve semi-structured interviews were carried out. The change studied in this basketball team was not closely disputed. But lack of noticeable opposition doesn’t mean strong support. Players actually wore the dress in spite of their more or less marked reluctance. The conventions model constitutes a means of accounting for the forms of arrangements that have allowed the acceptance and maintenance of this change in the absence of its real appropriation by the totality of the stakeholders. The situation was made acceptable thanks to a set of other congruent arguments. Switches from one polity to another have been noticed, disclosing strategies relying on pluralist arguments. Such swings, orientated towards the lifting of criticism, unveil the fluidity of organisations and their multiple setups.