SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PROJECTS

2012

Creating and Capturing Value in Public-Private Ties: A Private Actor’s Perspective

Kivleniece I & Quelin B, Academy of Management Review, Forthcoming in April 2102.

Intersecting the boundaries of public and private economic activity, public-private ties carry important organizational strategy, managerial, and policy implications. We identify the value-creation and capture mechanisms embedded in these ties through a theoretical framework of two conceptual public-private structural alternatives, each associated with different value-creating capacities, rationales, and outcomes. Two important restraints on private value capture — public partner opportunism and external stakeholder activism — arise asymmetrically under each form, carrying a critical effect on partnership outcomes. [download]

2011

The Impact of Non-Conforming Behaviors on Firm Reputation

Philippe D & Durand R. 2011. Strategic Management Journal, 32: 969-993.

Deviance from social norms has been extensively examined in recent strategy research, leaving the strategic implications of conformity largely unexplored. In this article, we argue that firms can elect to conform to a norm along two dimensions: compliance with the goal and level of commitment to the procedures. We then produce a typology of four norm-conforming behaviors, which allows us to isolate differentiated effects of conformity on firm reputation. We examine the corporate environmental disclosures of 90 U.S. firms and find that firms derive different reputational rewards depending on whether they conform to the goal or procedure dimension of the environmental transparency norm. In addition, the relationship between conformity and reputation is moderated by the firm’s prior reputation and the stringency of the normative environment.

Heterogeneous motives and the creative collection of value

Bridoux F, Coeurderoy R, and Durand R. 2011. Academy of Management Review. 36(4):711-730.

The collective creation of value has remained underexplored in management research. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, we analyze the impact of the mix of employee motives to cooperate and compare the collective value generated by three motivational systems: individual monetary incentives, benevolent cooperation, and disciplined cooperation. Aligning the motivational system with the mix of motives in the workforce allows firms to foster cooperation and realize the value creation potential of their resources.

Strategic approaches of CO2 emissions : the cases of the cement and chemical industries

Arjaliès DL, Goubet C & Ponssard JP. 2011. Revue Française de Gestion. 215(6):123-146.

The ability of firms to transform an environmental constraint into a strategic opportunity has always been a controversial issue in the literature. Based on a comparative study of CO2 strategies in the cement and chemical industries, the article shows that the capacity of firms to be proactive regarding sustainable development is largely constrained by the characteristics of the sector in terms of dependence on natural resources, flexibility in the composition of activities portfolio and structure of the downstream sector. [download]

Better Vision for the Poor

Karnani A, Garrette B, Kassalow J & Lee M. 2011. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Spring issue.

Several social enterprises are attempting to provide eye- glasses to the 500 million to 1 billion poor people in the world who need them. Some enterprises see the provision of trained optometrists as the key to solving the problem; others are focused on cost reduction; others still are focused on technological innovations. Why haven’t any of these approaches succeeded on a large scale?

2010

A Social Movement Perspective on Finance: How Socially Responsible Investment Mattered.

Arjaliès, DL. 2010. Journal of Business Ethics, 92: 57-7.

This study discusses how social movements can influence economic systems. Employing a political-cultural approach to markets, it purports that ‘compromise movements’ can help change existing institutions by proposing new ones. This study argues in favor of the role of social movements in reforming economic institutions. More precisely, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) movements can help bring SRI concerns into financial institutions. A study of how the French SRI movement has been able to change entrenched institutional logics of the French asset management sector provides wide-ranging support for these arguments. Empirical findings are drawn from a longitudinal case study (1997-2009), based on participative observation, interviews and documentary evidence. Implications for research on social movements, institutional change and SRI are outlined. Lastly, the study provides practitioners with some theoretical keys to understand the pros and cons of ‘SRI labels’.

Le Marketing entre l’Activité Marchande et le Marché

Laufer R. 2010. in L’activité marchande sans le marché ? – Colloque de Cerisy Armand Hatchuel , Olivier Favereau , Franck Aggeri , Collectif Broché, Ed.: Presses de l’Ecole des Mines, Collection: Economie et Gestion.

Challenges in Marketing Socially Useful Goods to the Poor

Garrette B and Karnani A. 2010. California Management Review, 52(4).

Market based solutions to alleviate poverty have become increasingly popular in recent years. Unfortunately, there are very few examples of profitable businesses that market socially useful goods in low-income markets and operate at a large scale. This article examines in-depth three case studies of multinational firms that tried to market unquestionably useful products — clean water, eyeglasses, and nutritious yoghurt — to the poor, and did not succeed commercially. We also discuss two positive examples of profitable BOP ventures: mobile phones and detergents. The overarching lesson we draw from the case studies is that developing strategies for marketing socially useful goods to the poor, far from triggering a revolution in business thinking, requires firms to get back to the basic principles and rules of economics and business [paper].

Exporting professional models: the expansion of the multinational audit firm and the transformation of the French accountancy profession since 1970

Ramirez C, under review for Accounting Organizations and Society

This paper analyses the transformations since 1970 in the French accountancy profession induced by the globalisation of France’s economy. The growing internationalisation of French companies and the opening up of French financial markets to foreign investment are clearly identified as key factors in the multinational audit firms’ expansion on the French professional services market. Far from offering a solely market-based argument, however, the paper introduces the professional model concept to examine how those firms have adapted to the French professional environment. While the Anglo-American professional tradition was able to generate the model of the big multinational firm and place it at the apex of professional practice, the French ideal of professionalism long equated independent practice with small practice under the protection of the State. The paper relates the various episodes in the progressive displacement of the French audit practitioner model by the Big firm model, and the ensuing redistribution of intra-professional hierarchies within the French profession. The Big firm model’s success is analysed as resulting just as much from its greater capacity to meet the needs of major companies, and its ability to espouse local ways of producing social elitism, as from local professionals’ failure to develop an alternative model able to compete with the multinational firm. Keywords: professions – audit – globalisation – France – sociological history

2009

Human resources, human resource management, and the competitive advantage of firms: toward a more comprehensive model of causal linkages.

Chadwick C. and Dabu A. 2009. Organization Science, 20: 253-272.

We maintain that human resources are strategically significant in at least three cases, when these resources (1) help create traditional Ricardian rents; (2) function as components of organizational capabilities that generate nontraditional Ricardian rents; and (3) are the source of technological and managerial innovations that produce entrepreneurial rents. Human resource management (HRM) activities, on the other hand, assume strategic significance by supporting the three cases above through a process that we call managerial entrepreneurship. Furthermore, HRM takes on different forms when supporting each of these types of rents. Hence, this rent-based view has greater potential to help explain the contribution of human resources to firms’ competitive advantages than approaches that are grounded in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, which primarily reflects the Ricardian view of rents. Moreover, a rent-based approach suggests fruitful new ways to address many of the theoretic challenges confronting the strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature.

Criticisms of Capitalism, Budgeting and the Double Enrolment: Budgetary Control Rhetoric and Social Reform in France in the 1930s and 1950s

Berland N. and Chiapello E. 2009. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2009, 34 (1): 28-57.

This article is a contribution to the study of the spread of management innovations, methods and rhetorics. It particularly concerns the influence of ideological and political factors, which have so far mostly escaped in-depth study. In particular, we seek to understand to what extent a critique of society developed by social reformers can be a source of inspiration for managers, leading them to change their practices and experiment with new devices. Relying on the framework of historical change in management practices developed by Boltanski & Chiapello (2005), we study the specific development of budgetary control in France, examined in the light of the general political and economic history of the 20th century. This framework simultaneously encompasses the dissemination of a new accounting practice, the transformation of capitalist institutions and modes of regulation in a given period and country, and the programmatic discourses (Miller & Rose, 1990) associated with the historical move. More exactly, what interests us is a double enrolment process. The business world promoters of budgetary control use the rhetorics of social reformers to present budgetary control as a solution to the economic and social problems of their time; conversely, social reformers promote budgetary control as a realistic, efficient tool that can change the world. Ultimately, a degree of alliance is possible around this management tool, although the extent to which the meanings each group attributes to its action are shared may remain unclear. Based on an analysis of the writings of budgetary control promoters of the 1930s and the 1950s, we show the close links between their discourse and the reforming ideas of their time, and how we can trace through this corpus the evolution of this kind of political rationalities (Miller & Rose, 1990) associated with governing and managing corporations we call the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005).

An unprecedented privatisation of mandatory standard-setting: the case of European accounting policy

Chiapello E. and Medjad K. 2009. Critical perspectives on accounting, 20 (4): 448-468.

The EU-member States have long intended to harmonize their respective accounting rules in order to facilitate the comparison between European companies. This process was brutally accelerated by a 2002 regulation announcing that as of 2005, listed companies would be required to comply with the accounting standards enacted by the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board), a private body which, until then, had no public mandate. After having tried to harmonize internally the respective standards of its members, the EU has thus decided to resort to private subcontracting, an even more puzzling decision when one realizes that at the time, the EU had simply no statutory control means on the IASB. Building on this striking episode of privatization of the regulatory process, we first examine the structure and governance of the IASB, and the process leading to the transplantation of its norms into EU law. In a second part, we argue that while diverse, the reasons behind such relinquishment of public authority lie primarily within the EU itself. In a third part, we show that in the area of accounting, such transfer of competences went well beyond known forms of delegation to private sector. In a final part, we discuss the subsequent – and so far successful attempt of the EU to reassert its authority as well as its agenda in this area.

Capabilities or institutional opportunities?  Exploration and Exploitation in Research and Development at the national level

Mindruta D. and Hoetker G. 2009. Research Project.

This project aims to explore the impact of macro-institutional infrastructure on firms’ innovation strategies (exploration-exploitation) across a sample of 20 countries during the1963-1999 timeframe. The paper links the political science literature on varieties-of-capitalism with March’s(1991) model of organizational learning, relating institutional attributes of existing political economies to factors that foster, or conversely, constrain organizational investment in exploratory and exploitative innovation strategies. Our findings are generally consistent with our hypotheses: liberal-market regimes tend to sustain organizational practices oriented towards exploration, while coordinated-market regimes foster exploitation more than exploration strategies. However, we find several intriguing exceptions that argue for a finer-grained understanding of how institutions affect innovation. In particular, we find several countries with coordinated-market regimes in which more explorative innovation occurs than predicted. These countries each have at least one component of their institutional environment that is more characteristic of liberal market economies, e.g., an active venture capital market. Further investigation is warranted into the conditions under which limited flexibility is sufficient to overcome the impact of an otherwise rigid set of institutions.

Constructing the governable small practitioner: the changing nature of professional bodies and the management of professional accountants’ identities in the UK

Ramirez C. 2009. Accounting Organizations and Society, 34: 381-408

This paper aims at contributing to the sociology of the accountancy profession by analysing how professional organisations govern the various categories that have emerged in the professional body throughout its history. To this end, the attempt by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales to give an institutional existence to the category of “the small practitioner” is examined. The plasticity and the polysemic nature of the notion of smallness, which refers simultaneously to physical (small/big), geographical (local/global) and moral (anonymous/notorious) characteristics, offers a particular opportunity to show how these three dimensions have been integrated into evolving organisational arrangements and discourses aimed at legitimising the professional order. It is contended that the definition of what small practitioners are, and how they should be dealt with, can only be understood as part of the broader issue of governance of the accountancy community and the nature of the professional body. The ICAEW’s efforts to problematise the nature of small practices indicates a will to integrate distant modalities of accounting expertise into a single professional space, so as to prevent the physical and geographical distance between big and small firms from becoming too conspicuous a hierarchical distinction, and thus preserve the ideal of the community of peers upon which professional bodies have been built. Keywords: professions – governance – professional organisations – social categories

New Rhetoric’s Empire: Pragmatism, Dogmatism, and Sophism

Laufer R. 2009. Philosophy and Rhetoric, Volume 42, Number 4, pp. 326-34.

There are at least two reasons to devote some attention to sophism when dealing with the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in the context of Franco-American intellectual exchanges. The first reason is that it lies at the very origin of classical philosophy which could be described as resulting directly from the way in which Plato and Aristotle succeeded in separating the realm of rhetoric from the realm of philosophy. The second reason arises out of the way in which Durkheim, the founder of French academic sociology, thought it necessary to establish a clear distinction between sociology and pragmatism. This was done in a course given at the Sorbonne during the academic year 1913–14. The course could be considered a direct answer to the lectures on pragmatism given by William James at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1906–7 (Durkheim 1955). From the very beginning of his talk, Durkheim expresses an extremely ambivalent point of view. On the one hand, pragmatism, better than any other doctrine, allows one to feel the necessity of reforming or renovating the type of “traditional rationalism” that dominated the French intellectual atmosphere of the time. On the other hand, it represents a real threat for this same rationalist tradition. Is it not a declaration of war that pragmatism launches on rationalism when William James writes that “against rationalism as a pretension and a method pragmatism is fully armed and militant” (1975, 32)? In the face of this attack Durkheim declares that what is at stake are the very foundations of French culture: “Our whole French culture is essentially based on rationalism. Here the eighteenth century lives on. Thus, a radical negation of rationalism would constitute a danger: it would imply a complete disruption of our national culture. The whole French spirit would have to be transformed if the form of irrationalism that pragmatism…

2008

Social Issues in the Study of Management

Guthrie D. and Durand R. 2008. European Management Review, 5 :137-149.

The last 30 years have seen an explosion of activity in the areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social enterprise. With these emergent corporate practices has come a significant amount of attention among scholars and practitioners to how we should understand this phenomenon. What forces have driven managers and owners to re-think their responsibilities as extending beyond profit maximization and increasing shareholder value? In this paper, we introduce some of the key issues that have guided research on the social issues of management over the last 30 years. We argue that, despite the growing strength of research in this area, there are four key ways in which we would like to see scholarship in this area develop further: (i) Scholarship in this area should incorporate a greater appreciation for the institutional history in which these practices have emerged. Research in this area tends to be ahistorical, and it is often the case that corporate social practices have emerged because of deep-seated institutional struggles.  (ii) Scholarship should rely more on comparative analysis to illuminate the importance of the contexts in which these practices emerge. (iii) Scholarship should engage more thoroughly with the legal and finance literatures on corporate governance. Many of the issues that fall under the ‘social issues of management’ rubric are fundamentally issues of corporate governance, and while some management scholars have embraced the corporate governance literature, research on the social issues of management rarely draws upon this important body of work. (iv) Methodological plurality is key to thinking through the mechanisms that drive organizational practices, and we would like to see more work in this area that employs multi-method approaches to examine the organizational practices.

Où est passé le management public ? Incertitude, institutions et risques majeurs

Laufer R. 2008. Politiques et management public – Special Issue – 25 ans de Politiques et Management Public, vol. 26, no 3.

2007

Code and Conduct in French Cuisine: Impact of Code-Changes on External Evaluations

Durand R., Rao H., and Monin P. 2007. Strategic Management Journal, 28 (5): 455-472.

We study the effects of organizational code-preserving and code-violating changes on external evaluations by third parties—an essential but under-studied strategic outcome. We define code preserving changes as a variation in the firm’s product range that preserves the social code within which the firm positions its offering. By contrast, a code-violating change corresponds to a variation in the product range that breaks with past codes and embraces another social code. Our analyses of French haute cuisine restaurants show that code-preserving changes and code-violating changes have positive effects on external evaluations. Both effects decline with prior evaluations received by the organization, but only the effect of code-violating changes is reduced with age. Moreover, external evaluations improve when restaurants undertake more code-preserving changes than their direct competitors but decline when they make more code-violating changes than competitors. These results enable us to derive implications for research on strategic change, strategic groups, and strategic social positioning.

Accounting and the birth of the notion of capitalism

Chiapello E. 2007. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13 (3): 263-296.

The purpose of this paper is to cast a new light on the post-Sombartian debate. As we know, Sombart (1916) thought that the invention of double-entry bookkeeping was essential to the birth of capitalism. Max Weber developed the same theme, but to a lesser extent. Accounting scholars have debated the idea quite extensively during the 20th century. All these previous works have in common the fact that they address the historical question by comparing accounting practices to business practices, some of which are interpreted as capitalist. In this paper, my aim is not so much to understand the birth of capitalism, but to contribute to some understanding of the birth of the concept of capitalism itself. The concept was forged during the 19th century. At that time, capitalism and a certain kind of double-entry bookkeeping practice that was able to highlight the circuit of capital were inextricably linked. It might be suggested that this historical situation greatly helped the scholars of the period to conceptualize what they called capitalism, and it is easy to show that the notion of capitalism itself is rooted in accounting notions. I will thus argue that the history of how the concept of capitalism was invented is an example of the influence of accounting ideas on economic and sociological thinking.

2005

Legitimating agencies facing selection: the case of AACSB

Durand R. and McGuire J. 2005. Organization Studies, 26(2) p113-142.

This article proposes that legitimating agencies such as accreditation organizations face selection pressures to both maintain their legitimacy among their constituents, but also to expand the domain of their activities. We argue that domain expansion raises three important research questions: first, the factors that lead legitimating agencies to expand their domain; second, the need to maintain legitimacy among existing constituents; and third, the establishment of legitimacy in the new domain. We use the domain expansion of the AACSB to develop propositions relevant to these three research issues. Quality concerns, process vs. content strategy, and institutional entrepreneurship are the main factors that impact the legitimation of legitimating agencies.