June 2016
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 124
Editorial
By Pascal LEFEBVRE
Editorialiste
OVERLOOKED…
Chinese direct foreign investments: What are the motives?
By Dominique Jolly ,
professor of corporate strategy and director of the Walker School of Business (Webster University, Geneva)
and Bernard Belloc
advisor in strategy to the board of administration of SKEMA Business School
Chinese direct foreign investments have soared since 2004. Over time, the targets have become bigger and are less often ailing firms. These investments are made under full control by the Chinese government. An argument is presented in support of the thesis that the country’s enormous currency reserves are a powerful, nearly free, means for investing abroad, even though the yuan is not de facto convertible. It is necessary to distinguish among foreign direct investments those that are made to secure the country’s access to raw materials and energy. The latter fall into three strategic categories: a) broadening the access of foreign firms to chinese market; b) enabling the country to obtain access to assets that it lacks; and c) diversifying so as to reduce risks.
Preventing fraud in financial establishments: A “crossed appropriation”
By Nicolas Dufour
PhD in management professor affiliated with the Paris School of Business
and Emmanuel Laffort ,
consultant in organization and associate researcher at the Centre de Recherches et d’Études en Gestion (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour)
How can financial establishments obviate fraud related to market activities? Two forms of qualitative research help us answer this question. The one focuses on market operators whereas the other, via operational risks, focuses on risk-controllers. A comparison of the semidirective interviews conducted during this research shows that the organization of controls through a “crossed appropriation” helps market operators and risk-controllers to identify cases of fraud.
TRIAL BY FACT
The manager’s role and posture in sense-making during the deployment of quality control in an international humanitarian organization
By Christelle PERRIN
Maître de conférences à l’Université de Versailles St-Quentin en Yvelines
and Rémi FABBRI
Docteur en sciences de gestion au Centre européen de recherche en économie financière et gestion des entreprises (Université de Lorraine)
Christelle Perrin , associate professor at the University of Versailles St. Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) and Rémi Fabbri PhD in managerial sciences at the Centre Européen de Recherche en Économie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises (University of Lorraine)
Briefing-debriefing: A procedure for lifting the barriers to organizational learning?
By Pierre Barbaroux ,
research professor at École de l’Air, Centre de Recherche de l’Armée de l’air (CReA)
and Cécile Godé ,
professor, COACTIS (University Lumière Lyon 2)
This article investigates how teams and organizations manage to mitigate the impacts of unfavorable factors to organizational learning. Elaborating on organizational action learning theories, this contribution addresses the following question: how do briefing-debriefing procedures enable mitigating organizational learning barriers? Building on a case study that focuses on French air force squadrons’ briefing-debriefing procedures, this contribution suggests that organizational learning depends upon a variety of learning mechanisms, organizational norms, behavioral values and technological artifacts which assemblage is enacted by individuals through social inquiry and reflective thinking. Altogether, these resources enable organizations to moderate the impacts of technical, socio-cultural and psychological barriers on organizational learning.
IN QUEST OF A THEORY
The internationalization strategies of French and German firms: Two different models
By Pierre-André Buigues
and Denis Lacoste ,
professors of strategy at Toulouse Business School
Macroeconomic statistics and data on big firms are used to compare the types of internationalization strategies adopted by French and German firms. The two models have differences related to how investments are made outside the country and to decisions about exports as well as the volume and nature of foreign investments. Several possible explanations are proposed about these differences in corporate internationalization strategies. Costs, the strategic choices made by firms and the institutional and cultural environment figure among the variables accounting for the noticeable differences between these two models. free download
What interest do client firms have in co-creating a B2B service?
By Élodie Jouny-Rivier ,
PhD in managerial sciences, University of Orleans, professor at École Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d’Angers (ESSCA)
Today, user’s involvement in product or service co-creation is part of many corporate strategies. Toward the growth of this trend called “co-creation”, a huge number of research in management focus on the way customers and companies co-create. However, a few of them study the perceived benefits of customers to commit to the collaboration empirically and none of them in a B2B context of service creation. Yet, customers’ participation is not always rewarded. In this context, we may wonder why B2B customers should engage in value co-creation projects? To answer this question, three case studies of new service co-creation are presented. Findings mainly show that organizational and social benefits are the most determining factors of customers’ commitment to service co-creation.
Mosaics
“They told me it was impossible!” on Jean-Baptiste Rudelle’s
On m’avait dit que c’était impossible / Le manifeste du fondateur de CRITEO (Paris: Stock, 2015).
By Dominique Jacquet
Liberty, immorality and profitability
On M. Detchessahar’s Le Marché n’a pas de morale (Paris: Éditions du Cerf).
By Frédéric Kletz