For a long time, addressing sustainability problems has been regarded as a technological challenge. Today, supporting the transition to a more sustainable world has transcended this technological status and emerged as a quintessential management, economic, and behavioral challenge. Within this realm, research in social sciences and management assumes a pivotal role, offering insights across various crucial dimensions of the transition.
To retain talent, sell their products or attract investors, and generally justify their existence, businesses need to be perceived by society at large as legitimate. But as social values evolve over time or after a sudden crisis, organizations may see their actions and purpose questioned. In this interview, Julien Jourdan, expert on the consequences of reputation, legitimacy and scandals on organizations, explains why legitimacy is key to resilience for businesses.
In 2022, HEC Paris in Qatar launched a dedicated Business Research Laboratory to produce in-depth case studies on businesses and organizations in the GCC region. Deval Kartik is lead case writer at HEC Paris in Qatar. She explains the importance of this new laboratory for learners, organizations and the region itself.
Be they in Dakar, Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Lagos or Paris, it is indispensable for executives to understand social contexts. This understanding is built on a genuine interest in local practices, attentive listening to stakeholders, and a sociological spirit, which means giving thought to how societies function and are transformed. How do players construct and coordinate their activities? What relations do individuals have with society? Based on rigorous empirical work, the sociology of organizations provides keys to understand local managerial specificities. This kind of approach appears essential for anyone who wants to work in Africa. The point I would like to make here is just how important context is and why it is in the manager’s interest to listen to sociologists.
Most international development agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have some experience planning and evaluating projects using the Logical Framework matrix. Professors of Accounting Daniel Martinez (HEC Paris) and David Cooper (University of Alberta) traced the managerial traditions that informed this visual instrument and the implications this has for international development.
Today's coronavirus crisis has driven down our economy. Such a pause has a negative impact on world trade and economic growth; its social implications (loss of income and employment, increased inequality…) will have explosive consequences. In this context, there are many calls for a model change: let's not just press the "pause" button to restart the existing model, let's use this opportunity to reinvent it!
Fears about deglobalization and economic decoupling are not new but have grown in the wake of the coronavirus. Jeremy Ghez, Associate Professor on the Education Track at HEC Paris, explains in four big ideas what the Covid-19 outbreak means for the global business environment.
Within the last 30 years, Shanghai has been through a dramatic evolution similar to the one that Paris has experienced for more than a century. This phenomenon has had a considerable impact on both life experience and the business environment. For 5 months, I conducted one-of-a-kind field research on how people in Shanghai experience what can be called “super acceleration”. This experience, closely tied to a feeling of short termism, can be defined as the fast expiry of trustable bearings.