Symbolic capital at EDF, History of a social reputation preserved. How can the past still help organizations to project into the future?

The purpose of this communication is to highlight that the past determines the present and can still help the French historic energy company and its agents to plan and invent their future. The main issue of our communication is thus posed: to what extent can EDF's past and the symbolic capital of its agents allow it to preserve its reputation as a social enterprise, a fortiori vis-à-vis customers in situation of fuel poverty? The central hypothesis of our study is that the diversity of forms of internal solidarity specific to large public service organizations is found in the way agents adapt to transformations and fulfill their missions vis-à-vis customers in difficulty. The symbolic capital that has aggregated over time among agents practically contributes to preserving the social reputation of the company, despite its deinstitutionalization combined with other organizational phenomena.