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SOCIAL GROUPS AND IMPLICATIONS OF COOPERATION AT WORK IN INDUSTRY In this paper the answers that employees in industry gave in the Organizational Change and Computerization survey in 1997, coupled with a post-survey on collective work, are used to analyse the signification, implications and characteristics of collective work in relation to the positions occupied. Interviews show that the working group is distinguished from the organization in so far as its members see it as a reality sui generic, endowed with a form of sociability, a team spirit and shared ethical values. Cooperative relationships at work are based on individuals' lasting dispositions and depend on the trajectories of group members and individual career opportunities. From a statistical point of view, collective work seems to be linked to qualifications and to the size of the firm. While it may be coupled with mutual aid and an increase in autonomy, it is also accompanied by normative supervision of work, which results in the paradoxical figure of framed autonomy.