Industrial entrepreneurs of the Vendée hedged farmland: Essay on the contribution of business leaders to industrial development in the northeast of Vendée[Les entrepreneurs industriels du bocage vendéen : Essai sur la contribution des chefs d'entreprise au développement industriel du nord-est de la Vendée]

This research aims to better understand the role of employers in the industrial development of the Vendée hedged farmland. It is based on sociological work devoted to entrepreneurship and industrialization in rural areas. In the case of the north-east of Vendée, we are dealing with a dense but diffuse settlement area, linked to the swarming of industrial enterprises in a tight network of villages and hamlets. This territory is characterized by a system of small specialized companies which promotes the transmission of professionalism and the free exchange of ideas necessary for the development of flexibility and innovation. Such a local system is akin to what we can rightly call an industrial district, organized around local solidarities in which all local resources are strongly involved. The main observation that emerges from observing this territory remains the significance of the entrepreneurial logic. The history of many workshops in this region thus shows a gradual transition from the artisanal stage to the industrial stage: a slow, often hazardous and difficult transformation of small businesses whose owners ensure the financial, commercial and technical risk. Here, capital and techniques have followed and accompanied entrepreneurial dynamism and productive performance, and not the reverse as is commonly the case. At the origin of this entrepreneurial success, we must be careful not to retain only the creativity and the spirit of initiative of the people of the region. Indeed, the multiple biographies studied show that entrepreneurs are not necessarily exceptional individuals, and even less inveterate risk takers. Above all, they know how to center their forces for years in pursuit of the same project, by offering a positive sum game to all the partners whose contribution they request. Contrary to the still living myth of the entrepreneur endowed with rare qualities, this x-ray of the Vendean bosses shows that they are close to their employees by their trajectory and by their conduct, that they rely on many networks to carry out their activity and that they are attached to values ​​inherited from the past which have encouraged and supervised economic initiatives.