Corporate finance

The business case study co-authored by Sam Aflaki, Professor of Operations Management and Sara Rezaee Vessal, Assistant Professor of Operations Management at ESSEC, and HEC Paris graduate Victoria Reca, has just been released on The Case Centre platform. The case tackles the societal taboo topic of menstrual hygiene management at the work place of women textile factory workers who do not have adequate access to self-care products.

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.

Qatar may have been significantly more resilient to the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries, thanks to its experience of economic blockade and a fast-growing digital entrepreneurship ecosystem that is actively transforming the country’s economy. This is the principal finding of a compelling new study led by Allan Villegas-Mateos, Research Associate at HEC Paris in Qatar.

In 2022, HEC Paris in Qatar launched a dedicated Business Case Center 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 center for learners, organizations and the region itself. 

In a rapidly changing professional world, where the pandemic changed the rules of the game, careers may feel like roller-coaster rides. To better respond to turbulence and take ownership of our careers and lives, we need to move into the driving seat. How so? By learning and nurturing resilience.

In the United Kingdom, more than 700 Post Office workers were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting between 2000 and 2014. That was the result of a fault in Horizon, a Fujitsu computer system used by the UK Post Office. How can AI solutions be developed to detect and prevent such intelligent anomalies? To answer these questions and more we have turned to HEC Professor of Accounting and Management Control, Aluna Wang. She is also chairholder at Hi! PARIS Center on Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.

The case study on Alenvi, by HEC Paris graduate Léa Veiga-Planells and Strategy Professor Laurence Lehmann-Ortega, demonstrates how managerial innovation enables a business model to be reinvented in a mature and non-digitized sector and to assess the role that business purpose can play in shaping company's strategy.

Professor of Finance and Executive Director of the Société Générale Energy & Finance Chair at HEC Paris, Jean-Michel Gauthier spoke to us on March 3, one week after Russia invaded Ukraine. Jean-Michel is a veteran of the energy business. After a start in the oil and gas industry, he moved to the energy consulting for 16 years as a partner at Deloitte. In parallel, he joined HEC Paris’ finance department in 2006. The school campus is where we discuss the dramatic events developing in Ukraine. Jean-Michel focuses on a key factor behind the conflict: the question of energy. Not just the pipelines that bring Europe 40% of its natural gas and much of its oil – but also the knock-on effects on all energy sources that prop up our global economy. He helps us understand what role energy is playing in this ongoing conflict and where these upheavals could lead the entire planet.

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.