Doctor Anicet Fangwa's work on health centers and stillbirths in the Democratic Republic of Congo could save millions of lives by better managing health practices throughout Africa. The PhD graduate from HEC Paris describes the managerial tools he's been using in remote parts of the DRC.
By Anicet Fangwa , Bertrand Quélin , Marieke Huysentruyt
The case on Camif by Margot Bréard, HEC Paris graduate, in collaboration with Bénédicte Faivre-Tavignot and Laurence Lehmann-Ortega, Education Track Professors of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, has been published by the Case Centre platform. It investigates the process of defining a company’s overarching ‘purpose’, it emphasizes the link between purpose and corporate culture and shows the transformative power a strong purpose statement has for the organization and how its strategy is deployed.
“Montrennoble: Flourishing sustainable city in France” case, written by HEC Paris Professor Bertrand V. Quélin, Bouygues Chair Professor in Smart City and the Common Good and HEC graduate Isaure Fraissinet, has just been released on the Case Centre platform. The case's objective is to help participants analyze the needs of a sustainable and smart city in an encompassing manner, meeting the city’s energy and mobility needs today as well as anticipating the future.
Investing in knowledge diversification or specialization is a topic of interest and debate for employees, managers, and researchers since a long time. In a recent study, Strategy and Management Professors Denisa Mindruta of HEC Paris, Guoli Chen and Philipp Meyer-Doyle of INSEAD and Sterling Huang of the Management University of Singapore, aimed to understand the consequences of corporate decisions of generalist and specialist CEOs on firm performance, by comparing their decisions in all the acquisitions done by U.S. S&P 1500 firms over a ten-year period.
By Denisa Mindruta
While corporate social responsibility (CSR) is widely viewed as highly strategic, not all firms address all dimensions of CSR equally, either across or within sectors. But how much latitude have they actually got when deciding which dimensions to prioritize? And is it more profitable to follow industry norms and patterns or to craft a unique CSR strategy? Researchers Leandro Nardi of the HEC Paris S&O Institute, Todd Zenger of the David Eccles School of Business, Sergio Lazzarini of the Ivey Business School, and Sandro Cabral of Insper, show how making strategic investment choices of CSR dimensions can build competitive edge and greater financial value.
By Leandro Nardi
Digital content-sharing platforms provide important information to citizens around the world, but they also face enormous challenges, not least those posed by malicious, online information manipulators. Attempts to moderate online content are expensive and are constrained by business models. In addition to investigating the limits of content moderation, this study by HEC Professor of Strategy and Business Policy Olivier Chatain says that government bodies may have a role to play, providing new rules on how to moderate online content while safeguarding freedom of expression.
By Olivier Chatain
A new study of John Mawdsley and Rodolphe Durand of HEC Paris, and Lionel Paolella of the University of Cambridge, indicates that for U.S. law firms, efforts to increase gender diversity aren’t only motivated by a desire for fairness, but instead are driven by the need to take clients away from rival firms. The authors show that when women are increasingly represented in the senior ranks of clients of rivals, law firms strategically boost their own gender diversity to align with the diversity values of those clients. However, when increasing gender diversity is less likely to be successful for taking those clients, law firms reduce their gender diversity efforts in their organization.
By John Mawdsley , Rodolphe Durand
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.
Schneider Electric (SE) is a world leader in energy management. Corporate Knights ranked it the world’s most sustainable company in 2021. Knowledge@HEC met with Gilles Vermot Desroches, Director of Corporate Citizenship and Institutional Relations since 2020. A trained engineer, he has been designing Schneider’s sustainability for the last 25 years. He discusses the company’s understanding of ESG, its strategic efforts to develop its performance, and how to measure their impact.
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.
