A months-long strike by screenwriters and actors recently brought all creative output in the world of Hollywood to a standstill. Skilled workers for the big and small screen were worried about seeing their legal and financial interests wrecked by the encroachment of artificial intelligence (AI). In the context of this grassroots movement, we ask two questions from the perspective of comparative law as we try to swot aside certain legal and judicial “figments of the imagination” in favor of the technical reality: What is the legal status of a cinematographic work? And what is the legal status of AI?
How can the E.U. respond to the growing clamor for more citizen participation in its institutions? In a wide-ranging podcast, the Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law, Alberto Alemanno, proposes a permanent European Citizens Assembly to bring E.U. voters and their representatives closer together. The HEC professor also explores how lobbies can become a force for promoting social change. And he points out structural problems within the E.U. which are stymying the continent’s youth. Finally, Alemanno’s research with fellow academic Elie Sung pinpoints the oft-neglected impact of lobbies on judicial courts by interest groups– which are having devastating effects on societal issues like women’s and LBGTQI+ rights. Extracts.
Artificial Intelligence has a potentially disruptive impact on organizations, firms, and society at large. The latest mind-boggling illustration came with the discovery of chatGPT’s mesmerizing results in November 2022. This followed a fall of investments in AI last year in Silicon Valley. From analyzing data in one’s business to increasing customer engagement and replacing humans in routine tasks across industries, AI is becoming more relevant to our lives and economy every day. Everyone talks about it, but do we really understand its opportunities and threats? And how can we make the best out of it, whilst ensuring that ethical requirements are met?
Top-quality research and teaching are essential to understand growing inequalities which hinder the urgently needed ecological transition, to interrogate the ESG factors, and to leverage theory and the most ambitious empirical methods. To do so, HEC scholars work with public and private regulators, peers from leading European academic institutions, CEOs and administrators to develop, test, and evaluate novel strategies, policies and practices designed to tackle inequalities in their field. In this Knowledge@HEC issue, we share academic knowledge and highlight professional experiences on those topics. Find the pdf of that issue here.
Because of Europe’s strong social welfare tradition, the social dimension of business has an additional legitimacy and urgency here. Top-quality research and teaching have an essential role to play in understanding growing inequalities which hinder the urgently needed ecological transition, in interrogating the environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, their interplay and their promise and limitations, in leveraging theory and the most ambitious empirical methods. As a leading business school and research center in France and Europe, HEC Paris’ faculty has a responsibility in providing science-based evidence and practical tools to reinvent the business of tomorrow.
The European Commission mandated a group of experts to work on new European corporate social responsibility reporting requirements. Marieke Huysentruyt, Associate Professor of Strategy and Business Policy and Academic Director of the Inclusive Economy Center at the Society & Organizations Institute of HEC Paris, was part of a group that drafted legislation on the question of equal opportunity. She describes how her working group shaped their proposals for a wide, long-lasting impact.
By Marieke Huysentruyt
Is globalization’s time up? There are two major, and conflicting, views about this tricky topic. For many economists, free trade is a natural state of the global economic system. Any upheavals – Covid-19, the war between Ukraine and Russia, the resurgence of protectionism - can only result in temporary disruptions which, sooner or later, will be corrected. They are just bursts of irrationality, arising momentarily from political forces upsetting otherwise harmonious economic balance, etc.
Top personalities from the political and academic worlds, including Pascal Lamy, Peter Altmaier, John Denton and Merit Janow, were amongst the 17 speakers at a September 29 conference at HEC Paris on constitutionalism. Over three intense sessions, the policymakers and professors of law explored reforms in governance of public goods. In this article, however, our focus was on how innovative research in faculties should and sometimes does lead to concrete policy proposals.
Do international sanctions that are imposed with the intention to improve the human rights situation in the targeted country always lead to better human rights? No, according to Professors Armin Steinbach, Jerg Gutmann, Matthias Neuenkirch, and Florian Neumeier, who have studied empirically the legal proportionality test. Their results cast doubt on the lawfulness of many trade and financial sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and other countries – an insight that might extend to many of the sanctions in place today.
By Armin Steinbach
The world is constantly evolving and uncertain. However, if there is one certainty it is the need to remain humble. To better build the resilience needed to manage this change and uncertainty in a responsible way, find key findings and classic advice from HEC Paris researchers to decipher environments at all levels: from one’s own career to geopolitical business links. In this In-Depth issue, you will learn that family businesses focus more on resilience than on performance, that connecting private interests and sharing with the community is vital for sustainable objectives and that developing professional and personal resilience takes practice. You will also discover how hybrid governance and smart cities can overcome disrupted supply chains and fight social inequality. Find the PDF version of the Knowledge@HEC' In-Depth issue here.