This summer’s eruption of violence in the UK has renewed searching questions on the role social media plays in our society. It has also accelerated calls for new or revamped regulation of the country’s social media platforms, encapsuled in the UK’s Online Safety Act. But online violence and brutalization do not confine themselves to politicized and stigmatized communities. HEC Professor Kristine de Valck has explored, with fellow academics Olivier Sibai (University of Bath) and Marius K. Lüdicke (WU Vienna), the presence of direct, cultural, and structural violence in an online community that few researchers would imagine: the British electronic dance music community. Kristine shares her decade-long research on one such leisure-oriented community, on a phenomenon also observed on Reddit, Twitch and Discord platforms. She suggests ways to mitigate such online brutalization of consumers.
By Kristine De Valck
Our podcast series, Breakthroughs, dedicates a special episode to the launch of a new elective on sports and commerce for students. Titled “Sport & Business,” this six-month program includes theoretical work followed by fieldwork in partnership with the French professional football club Racing Club de Lens. Professor Luc Arrondel oversees the academic content of the elective. This researcher shares his pedagogical approach centered on the economics of football. In the second part of the podcast, we follow the first gathering of the Sports Economy Summit titled Sport Definition. HEC leaders, students, and alumni attended sessions dedicated to the school's research, teaching, and actions in this flourishing sector.
HEC Paris Professors Laurence Lehmann Ortega and Hélène Musikas have been working together for over 15 years on a business framework they call Odyssey 3.14. This strategy helps companies better invest in business models that promote innovation and sustainability. The result is a book which entered its third edition in September, entitled “(Re)invent Your Business Model with Odyssey 3.14”. The two academics describe the three pillars and 14 directions which have evolved significantly in the past decades.
Ever since he published “Strategic Management”, Edward Freeman has been at the forefront of a theory that stakeholders are interconnected. For his collective body of work, the economist from Darden School, Virginia, received an Honorary Doctorate from HEC Paris, adding his name to the 48 illustrious scholars on the HEC Honoris Causa list. The March 4 ceremony was followed by several thousand spectators, both live and online. Freeman’s visit to the Jouy-en-Josas campus was the occasion to discuss his stakeholder vision with a prism of the 21st century. Extracts from the exceptional Breakthroughs podcast, recorded for Knowledge@HEC.
Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing all fields of business, forcing academics and practitioners to revise their fundamentals. To discuss these new challenges, HEC Associate Professor Carlos Serrano and his colleague Thomas Åstebro organized a groundbreaking workshop inviting some of the world’s top researchers to compare their approach to those of leading industrialists. In our latest Breakthroughs, we discuss some of the takeaways with Serrano, an academic in the school’s Department of Economics and Decision Sciences.
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.
Since December 2022 and the arrest of Sam Bankman Fried in 2023, the FTX founder has been at the heart of a scandal rocking the world of cryptocurrencies and the on-chain features that underpins its entire existence. But it is also illustrating the impact of off-chain factors involved in blockchain operations. These off-chain characteristics are forms of communication and coordination that need to happen for the technical activities of the blockchain to function. Recent research by professors Dane Pflueger (Assistant Professor in the accounting department HEC Paris), Martin Kornberger (Vienna University) and Jan Mouritsen (Copenhagen Business School) helps to shed light on the complexities surrounding FTX’s accounting. The academics’ December 2022 publication in the European Accounting Review, explores the issues of governance, organizing, and trust that buttress the blockchain accounting systems. In a long interview from his HEC campus near Paris, Pflueger challenges the notion some have that blockchain technology does not need intermediaries like accountants to function.
By Dane Pflueger
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?
On the eve of the 11th annual D-TEA conference, promoting Dialogues between Theory, Experimental findings and Applications of decision-making (hence the acronym), we talk to its co-organizer Professor Itzhak Gilboa. Last year, the professor of decisions sciences was ranked by Stanford University in the world’s top six theoretical economists. Gilboa’s research centers on decision under uncertainty and decision models whereby uncertainty can’t be quantified. That is called non-Bayesian decision models – as opposed to the Bayesian approach which assigns probabilities based on experience or best guesses. The HEC Paris academic questions these axioms, or self-evident truths. He believes his research can help answer unforeseen crises, called black swans, like the war in Ukraine, health pandemics or the climate crisis. Extracts.
HEC Paris Associate Professor Guillaume Vuillemey explores the ways the maritime shipping industry has evolved in the past 40 years to systematically evade its corporate responsibilities. In his groundbreaking research he reveals how this industry – which handles over 80% of global trade flows – uses flags of convenience and limited liability to flout international and moral law. This has repercussions on the environment and basic human rights. In a 30 minutes interview, Vuillemey outlines his approach of this industry and its links to what some are calling the “dark side of globalization”. Extracts.