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This article considers how business and economic activities were integrated into the research conducted at Michel Crozier’s sociological laboratory after it was integrated into the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Four different periods have been identified. Between 1968 and 1980, the concept of “organization” is broad and businesses and public administrations are treated similarly. During the eighties, more conceptual coherence is required and the studies conducted in the laboratory are more clearly focused on organizational issues in the public sector. Nonetheless, the commercial sector is integrated through related research questions such as how economic initiatives can contribute to the modernization of the French society. During the next period between 1990 and 2005, the maturity of the “theory of organized action” led researchers to delve deeply into the complexity of human systems. It is also during this period that markets are being liberalized and the business model inherited from Fordism is increasingly called into question as a benchmark of complexity. Business enterprises thus become the focus of studies conducted by the laboratory during this phase but they are not the only subject of research as hospitals and universities in particular also attract the interest of researchers. Since 2005 another theme has emerged in response to the growing level of interest in the transformations of capitalism. The Research Centre on Sociology of Organizations has adopted elements of the economic sociology framework developed in the Anglophone world and has also integrated institutional approaches to the study of business. It is suggested that this development is not in contradiction with the Centre’s heritage as it continues to conduct organizational analysis using a “sociology of action” approach, thus preventing the complete and insurmountable dominance of one single approach in the field of social enquiry.