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.
Specialists continue to hotly debate the impact of culture on creativity. Based on recent and established research on the topic, three researchers applied a meta-analytical research technique to find out how certain cultural values and their level of enforcement determine the ways people best achieve creativity in a given country.
By Michel Lander
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.
We are living in a world of change. Change can take place inside or outside an organization. Change can be sudden and unexpected…
By Nils Plambeck
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man". (Heraclitus) This In-Depth dossier invites you to reflect upon change, and how individuals, firms, institutions, and the broader society deal with it.
By Giada Di Stefano
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.
This latest Knowledge@HEC Journal is the result of a collaboration with HEC Paris Executive Education team in Qatar on how to embrace change with a pluridisciplinary approach. "As a member of the Qatar Foundation, we have the great pleasure of supporting its mission to nurture the future leaders of Qatar, and contributing to human development nationally, regionally, and internationally", Nils Plambeck, Professor of Strategy and Business Policy, Dean and CEO of Executive Education at HEC Paris in Qatar.
Should teams be hierarchical, with clear task delegation, or should they be flexible and self-organizing? So far, literature and practice offer as many examples as counter-examples in favor of each model. By distinguishing between the types of tasks and the coordination each require, a new study of software development teams is able to recommend the best configuration for successful teamwork – a finding potentially applicable to any domain.
By Sri Kudaravalli