September 2019
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 137
OVERLOOKED…
Wastes as a potential commons: Towards a new form of governance of the environment
By Helen Micheaux
and Franck Aggeri
Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre de Gestion Scientifique (CGS), UMR CNRS i3 9217.
For the circular economy, deposits of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) are becoming a secondary source of key raw materials for satisfying the growing needs of both digital technology and the “green” energy, another major consumer of strategic metals. Working these deposits implies depolluting the wastes that contain dangerous substances with potentially tragic effects on people and the environment. These multiple and possibly contradictory issues have led to adopting rules of collective governance, which involve manufacturers, recyclers and public authorities. In Europe, WEEE is subject to the principle of the manufacturer’s responsibility for what happens to its products at the end of their life cycle. In France, this principle has led to setting up original arrangements for managing e-wastes through a governance similar to Elinor Ostrom’s common-pool resources. This striking analogy is examined in order to provide a new view of waste management policy in France and identify the ways to eventually improve it. free download
Four corporate strategies for coping with triumphant digital platforms
By Christophe Deshayes ,
Digital Matters, École de Paris du Management.
Menaced with extinction as a result of a presumably inevitable “uberization”, firms have to speed up their digital transformation. This detailed study of approximately twenty French firms and organizations that have advanced toward this transformation shows that theories based on management fashions do not suffice to explain such a deep trend. The strategies worked out and applied by these firms are much more specific and thorough than specialists’ vague strategic recommendations. The facts of these cases even lead us to question whether the scare of uberization is a valid explanation, since it is, as shown, possible to survive from Uber, Airbnb, Booking and even Amazon. Various strategies can be adopted: confront these platforms head-on (even belatedly), avoid them, negotiate with them or become their vassals. Returning to the work of drafting an in-depth corporate strategy would signal a break with the rudimentary, mimetic strategies that prevailed during the past two decades of globalization. free download
Big RH Data: Towards a new convention on quantification?
By Clotilde Coron ,
IAE Paris, GREGOR (EA 2474).
The use of big data in various spheres of society is modifying how we consume, obtain information and make decisions. However few studies have focused on how big data affects the way we use statistics and, in particular, quantify human resources (HR). Based on the theoretical framework of the “sociology of quantification”, this research seeks to examine whether, and how much, using big data contributes to designing new conventions on quantification in human resource management. It involved a case study that, conducted during a long period of immersion as the head of a firm’s “Big Data HR Project”, was followed up with eight semi-directive interviews. Big data contributed to creating a new convention about HR quantification based on a predictive (and no longer explanatory) approach. This convention has four paradigms: the model’s completeness, correlation, personalization and ongoing improvements.
TRIAL BY FACT
Organizational change in a retail bank and the quest for legitimacy: A complex process
By Sabine Reydet ,
Grenoble Alps University, CNRS, Grenoble INP, CERAG.
The banking industry is in the throes of change as firms are being forced to rework their strategies in order to evolve and survive. Organizational changes seldom take place without resistance from wage-earners, which has to be handled for the changes to be adopted and diffused. Actions of legitimation are one way to handle this resistance. To see how targeted groups can be led to embrace changes, the literature on wage-earner resistance to organizational change was examined in relation to the literature on the quest for legitimacy. Empirical research focused on a big French bank’s attempt to introduce an organizational change while overcoming resistance by using channels of internal and external communication. This qualitative study involved approximately fifty of the bank’s employees and two top managers. As the results show, targeting actions of communication attenuated several forms of resistance enough for the change’s pragmatic, cognitive and moral legitimacy to prevail.
Mosaics
“On Eric Charmes’ La revanche des villages: Essai sur la France périurbaine ” (Paris: La République des Idées, 2019)
By Frédérique Pallez
“English as a lingua franca : Advantages and disadvantages for management
On Geneviève Tréguer-Felten’s Langue commune, cultures distinctes. Les illusions du Globish ” (Laval: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018).
By Yasmine Saleh
“Digital technology, overturned strategies?
On Thomas Houy’s Le demi-tour numérique . Quand le digital oblige les entreprises à innover à l’envers ” (Saint-Mandé: Première Édition, 2018).
By Cécile Chamaret