June 2017
abstract
GĂ©rer & Comprendre
Issue 128
OVERLOOKED
A deus ex machina in the regulatory framework of credit in France: The recognition of “crowdlending” against the bank monopoly
By Antoine SOUCHAUD
ESCP Europe, Labex ReFi (ESCP Europe, ENA, La Sorbonne, CNAM)
Said by some to be a “divine surprise” but by others a “dramatic lack of consequence”, the exemption from the bank monopoly over credit granted to the platforms that adopt the new status of “intermediary in participatory financing” (IFP) has been a thunderbolt that remains largely unexplained. Why was it possible, in record time, to make a breach in regulations protecting the banking monopoly? This monopoly over lending was a regulatory principle; but intellectually, its legitimacy was almost unanimously considered to be very frail. The trade association grouping the platforms presented its approach to co-constructing this sector as a solution placed at the disposal of public authorities for dealing with the recession. A director of one of these IFP platforms proved to be a tough institutional entrepreneur who took upon himself the role of “legislator” of the proposed regulatory incubator. Cabinets, ministerial and presidential, played an unusual, active role, while the banking monopoly’s natural supporters were divided, unarmed and indecisive about the position to adopt during negotiations.
TRIAL BY FACT
A contextual approach to the management of skills and qualifications though informal practices: A survey of four medium-sized businesses
By Dominique Besson ,
IAE Université Lille 1, Laboratoire RIME Lab (EA 7396),
and Audace Olaba ,
PhD in management, research professor at the Institut National des Sciences de Gestion (Libreville, Gabon)
What effects do informal practices have on the management of skills and qualifications in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)? Informal practices refer to behaviors, work habits and other forms of wage-earner involvement that do not easily lend themselves to the formalized management of skills and qualifications as adopted in big firms. There is a variety of such informal practices in SMBs. The management of skills and qualifications established in big firms requires complicated forms of organization that, characterized by a high degree of formalization, can hardly be adapted to the “proximity management” in SMBs. The formal tools used by big firms have little to do with SMB managerial practices. In particular, they often overlook the specifically human nature of informal interrelations and disregard the mental dynamics of the interactions among wage-earners that make sense to them. Based on an in-depth analysis of four middle-sized firms, this research shows how wage-earners’ informal interactions fostered the development of a workplace “culture” conducive to collective skills and qualifications. When a person places his knowledge at a colleague’s disposal, his own skills and qualifications improve; and he contributes to an informal management of sills and qualifications based on elements from the internal and external context perceived by wage-earners. This perspective for placing human qualities at the center of the process opens the way to a review of the now prevalent instrumental approach.
The civil service: From the slow extinction of performance ratings to the institutionalization of interviews
By Paul Crozet ,
IAE, CRIISEA (University of Picardy Jules Verne)
In the French civil service, the evaluation of individuals might be evidence of the impossibility of reforming the public administration. Although the rating system has often been lambasted as worthless, it took fifty years to do away with this practice of assigning, every year, a score or grade to each civil servant. These fifty years do not argue in favor of the capacity for carrying out reforms. Nonetheless, laws have changed; and new practices has been officialized. The extinction of the system of individual ratings and its replacement with “evaluation interviews”, now called “professional interviews”, signals a transformation that amounts to much more than a change of language. How to interpret this switch from an experimentation with evaluation interviews (not foreseen under service statutes) to the legitimation of these interviews? The difficulty of defining “performance”, the quarrels surrounding the use of numerical indicators, social and ideological differences… all these have helped shape regulatory procedures and the first experiments in “developing skills and qualifications”.
Information and communications technology and/or sustainable development? The ecological paradox experienced by users
By Angélique RODHAIN, Florence RODHAIN et Bernard FALLERY
Laboratoire Montpellier Recherche en Management – MRM, Université de Montpellier
and JĂ©rĂ´me GALY
Laboratoire d’Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier – LIRMM, Université de Montpellier
The media often greenwash information and communications technology, even though the latter’s environmental costs have never stopped rising. The research reported herein for exploring this paradox has focused on how persons committed to the environmental cause put this new technology to use. According to interviews with them, these persons have implemented strategies for minimizing the guilt sparked by the difference between pro-environmental attitudes and less environment-friendly behaviors – specific strategies are adopted to remove guilt feelings. Information and communications technology is partly dematerialized and can be consumed without limit. It is “magical” – at the wave of a wand an ideological vision is summoned up that presents this technology as being environmentally virtuous. Massively used in the social and private spheres, this technology conveys markers of a sense of identity. Might this explain why even persons who, in other matters, adopt behaviors reflecting their awareness of environmental issues can hardly imagine regulating their consumption of information and communications technology?
IN QUEST OF A THEORY
Design Science Research Methodology at the service of research in management: Application to cost accounting systems
By Pierre MĂ©vellec ,
professor emeritus, Laboratoire d’Économie et de Management de Nantes-Atlantique (LEMNA, Nantes University)
Design science research is not a new methodology, even though it has been codified but recently and is, for the time being, still restricted to the engineering sciences in information systems. However it can also be efficiently used in the managerial sciences. By applying it to cost accounting systems, this article reviews a field of research that has been somewhat neglected since the very active period of work done there from 1990 to 2005. This disinterest can probably be set down, at least partly, to the lack of a method for globally analyzing the “artifact”, cost accounting systems. This presentation of applying Design Science Research methodology to deconstruct a major recent “innovation” will hopefully extend its scope of application both in research and in the practices of organizations that, day in, day out, cope with the difficulties arising along with new innovations.
The “social and solidarity firm”, or the need to change paradigms
By Éric Persais ,
CEREGE (EA 1722), Poitiers University
Mosaics
How economists are warming the planet
On Antonin Pottier’s Comment les économistes réchauffent la planète (Paris: Seuil, 2016)
By Franck Aggeri
When the world becomes a number
On Olivier Rey’s Quand le monde s’est fait nombre (Paris: Stock, 2016)
By Nicolas Berland
Artists in the city: Reinventing urbanism?
On Nadia Arab, Burcu Özdirlik and Elsa Vivant’s Expérimenter l’intervention artistique en urbanisme (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016)
By Frédérique Pallez
Are we going to have to pay to work?
On Valérie Segond’s Va-t-on payer pour travailler? (Paris: Stock, 2016)
By Marie-Pierre Vaslet