Brief summary of the meeting
This session is an opportunity to discuss the École de Paris du management and the proximity of the project developed to that of the Business Science Institute.
It begins with an introduction and a presentation of the speakers, orchestrated by Pierre-Jean Benghozi, who announces the start of the session and introduces the participants, Michel Berry, Director of Research at the CNRS and founder of the École de Paris du management, and Christophe Deshayes, co-director of the Phénix chair for major companies of the future - Mines Paris-PSL and seminar leader at the École de Paris du management.
The aim of this meeting is to organize an exchange between the Business Science Institute and the École de Paris, given their shared DNA in the production of non-standard knowledge.
A presentation of the Business Science Institute follows: founded over 10 years ago by Michel Kalika in response to demand from practitioners wishing to deepen their studies in the field of management, the Business Science Institute focuses on the Doctorate in Business Administration, offering a research framework focused on practice and creating impact. It stands out for its non-competitive approach to traditional doctorates, and is internationally recognized.
The École de Paris du management is historically very close to Mines Paris PSL.
It focuses on managerial and entrepreneurial practices. Organized into six seminars led by researchers, it covers a wide range of topics including social entrepreneurship, digital transformation and talent management. The École de Paris du management regularly invites practitioners to share their experiences at discussion sessions, the proceedings of which are published to help build knowledge.
The École de Paris approach is likened to "core drilling" in geology, enabling us to understand managerial practices beneath the surface. It produces multiple comparisons and valuable insights from the testimonies of practitioners, sometimes revealing surprises or astonishments.
The fundamental idea of the Ecole de Paris du management, which is in line with the DBA logic of the Business Science Institute, is to explore managerial practices as a means of deepening our understanding of corporate phenomena.
To illustrate this point, Christophe Deshayes takes the example of digital transformation and explains how the emergence of the platform concept was observed through a series of company cases. These cases revealed different strategies adopted by companies in the face of this phenomenon, often going beyond the conventional responses suggested by consultants.
Significantly, Christophe Deshayes highlights some surprising discoveries, such as excubation, where a company offers to take business ideas to market without taking an equity stake. This unexpected discovery leads to further observation and exploration of the implications for various management topics such as project management and outsourcing.
Christophe Deshayes stresses the importance of providing a conceptual framework for these emerging practices, in order to better understand and study them. He insists that these cases are not simply illustrations, but form a solid basis for management research. By exploring these cases intensively, it is possible to bring trends to light, and to nurture one's capacity for conviction in discussions with other players in the professional world.
Michel Berry completes this perspective by sharing his experience of working with practitioners, and emphasizing the importance of dialogue between researchers and practitioners in enriching management research. He refers to the creation of the École de Paris du management, which aims to develop research connected to the field and encourage dialogue between researchers and practitioners.
The discussion continued with questions from participants, notably on methodological lessons for doctoral students and on examples of "nuggets" discovered through the testimonies of practitioners.
In conclusion, the idea of further collaboration between the École de Paris du management and the Business Science Institute to deepen understanding of managerial practices and their impact on organizations was underlined.
To go further...
To find out more about the Business Science Institute : https://www.business-science-institute.com
To find out more about the Ecole de Paris du management and over 1,500 research seminar sessions and dialogues with seasoned professionals: https://www.ecole.org/fr/
Michel Berry, founder of the Ecole de Paris du management, summed up the school's project in the Revue française de gestion: "The world is changing rapidly. Strategy and management research appears to be more preoccupied with rankings than interacting with practitioners who have never needed to understand the complexity of the issues with which they are faced as much as they do today. Our society is in upheaval, but management researchers are so obsessed with publishing articles that they are blind to what is happening elsewhere. This is the same criticism which was levelled at American management research which was seriously called into question in the 1990s before globalisation obscured the problem. Does one have to venture outside the academic sphere in order to conduct research which is relevant to the challenges of our times? Not necessarily, if we are capable of creating situations where we have freedom of thought and can become inspired which, surprisingly, the French system is better at doing than the American system."
An article to be read here: Berry M., "Pour une recherche en management connectée aux enjeux d'aujourd'hui", Revue française de gestion, 2019/8 (N° 285), p. 29-41. DOI : 10.3166/rfg.2019.00381. URL: https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-gestion-2019-8-page-29.htm