March 2015
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Describing the markets: A scientific imperative
Issue 119
Editorial
By Pascal LEFEBVRE
Editorialiste
Introduction
By Hervé DUMEZ
i3-CRG École polytechnique-CNRS
Décrire les marchés, un impératif scientifique
The description of the first financial market: Looking back on Confusion of confusions by Joseph de la Vega
Un retour sur la Confusion des Confusions, de Joseph De La Vega
By Hervé DUMEZ
i3-CRG École polytechnique-CNRS
The first financial market in the world was the 17th-century stock exchange in Amsterdam. Joseph de la Vega’s description of it in his mythic Confusion of Confusions (1688) was the very first analysis of a stock market. As the title states, this writer, a trader in securities, saw the market as a vast disorder that normally produces order but also potentially generates chaos, since the first crashes soon followed on the market’s creation. Instead of a single account of this chaos, various viewpoints are presented. For this purpose, the author chose the form of a dialog between a subtle philosopher, a circumspect merchant and a clever shareholder. free download
From London to Porto: A description of the international wine market in the 18th century
By Paul Duguid ,
professor, School of Information, Berkeley
Describing a market is not an easy task, since the bounds are not set at the start but have to be explored, as shown herein with regard to the 18th-century market in port wine. Meeting up to the task means looking at politics (the confrontation between France and the United Kingdom, as well as between English and Scots), studying consumer tastes (as well as the ways politics shapes them) and exploring the chain of transactions running from the sale of port wine in the streets of London to the vineyards in the Douro valley… while not overlooking the role played by merchants or amazing institutions such as the Companhia Geral das Vinhas do Alto Douro, which was, all at once, a regulator, operator and merchant.
A confrontation between two ways of describing a market - In finance and in sociology: The case of exchange traded funds
By Laurent Deville ,
EDHEC Business School;
and Mohamed Oubenal ,
postdoctoral fellow at the Institut des Sciences de la Communication (CNRS-ISCC)
Since economists are interested in prices whereas sociologists focus on values, a financial economist and sociologist should come up with quite different descriptions of the same market. This has been corroborated by the two authors in an analysis of exchange traded funds (ETF). The two contrasting descriptions of this recently created but fast expanding financial market serve as the grounds for a dialog. The financial economist sees this market as a set of products and regulations that are merely functional responses to investors’ needs, whereas the sociologist sees it as a social arena. Whereas the first description reduces players in the market to their functional role, the second, though apparently more comprehensive, is also reductionist. Furthermore, the prerequisite for it is a financial description.
The place of description in the discourse of business leaders
By Benoît Demil ,
University of Lille (LEM, CNRS UMR 8179);
Xavier Lecocq ,
University of Lille (LEM CNRS UMR 8179) - IÉSEG School of Management
and Miscellany
Story-telling is an important activity of business leaders. Their discourse, a mixture of narratives and descriptions, is often intended to change reality. The discourse is examined of someone who managed to transform his market by providing a new description of how it works. This description was important since, owing to its informative and legitimating characteristics, it was performative in creating new market conditions. A description, however credible and elaborate it might be, does not make a strategic maneuver a sure winner.
Hors dossier
Information technology and the variety of forms of co-creation: Toward a new paradigm for American Defenseaméricaine
By Valérie Mérindol ,
Paris School of Business
This article investigates the role of Defence as an active user of technology. It shows that two user centric models of innovation co-exist: the owner and Lead user status. The article analyses the consequences of user’s characteristics on the client and firms relationships. It focuses also on the consequences of user’s characteristics on the technological and organizational capabilities associated to the client. The article is based on a depth case study related to the US Defence and on its role in the innovation processes.
Placing the “power to act” at the center of interventions: Another prevention of psychosocial risks?
By Damien Collard ,
associate professor, University of Franche-Comté, researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Gestion des Organisations (CREGO, EA 7317), University of Burgundy;
and Audrey Drouard ,
operations manager, Association APAMAD-La Croisée des Services
A category of personnel highly exposed to psychosocial risks is the employees who have contact with the public. To ward off such risks, organizations have often adopted prevention plans. A recent survey conducted in a prefecture has shed light on the deviant effects of such plans, which do not necessarily make sense to employees and tend, ultimately, to deprive them of a sense of responsibility. As this survey shows, front-office employees and their supervisors are not passive. They cultivate the “psychological and social resources” needed to cope with difficult situations at work. These resources should be fostered to reinforce this personnel’s “power to act” and ward off psychosocial risks at the workplace.
The determinants of European automakers’ international strategies: Exports or direct foreign investments
By Pierre BUIGUES
Professeur de stratégie, Toulouse Business School
Denis LACOSTE
Professeur de stratégie, Toulouse Business School
and Maurice SAIAS
Professeur de stratégie à l’IAE d’Aix - Graduate School of Management
What determines European automakers’ international strategies? To what degree are decisions about internationalization - exports or direct foreign investments - influenced by a firm’s specific advantages and/or by the comparative advantages of the country of origin? After reviewing how this question is answered in the literature, an empirical study of European automakers is presented that analyzes how a firm’s strategic position (its commitment to R&D) and changes in the country’s comparative advantage (labor costs and productivity) affect the choices made about internationalization. A better account can thus be drawn up of the differences between the performance of French and German automobile firms in internationalization.
Lessons in the anatomy of a conflict in an engineering school
By Michel ALIAS
A set of organizational events has not received much attention: exacerbated conflicts with group origins inside an organization. The characteristics of such conflicts and the conditions for their emergence are described. They should be seen as episodes of deregulating autonomous regulations, as controls coming from an inert management and as situations that make social exchanges impossible.
Mosaics
New approaches to performativity
On Fabian Muniesa’s The provoked economy, economic reality and the performative turn (London/New York: Routledge, 2014).
By Hervé Dumez