Understanding how plans for a European superhighway are funded
Michel Lyonnet du Moutier

The techniques for funding infrastructure projects assign risks to the organizations most capable of managing them, and they normally do this at the lowest cost. They imply a delicate handling of multilateral negotiations, conducted in parallel over several months with a dozen parties in a multinational and multicultural context. The analysis of funding a European superhighway project enables the author — who is involved in this operation — to confirm the analytical grid of the positive theory of agency about a seldom studied form of organization and to validate theoretical hypotheses worked out from this theory’s central postulates.
 

Management as narrative
Yves-Frédéric Livian

A short introduction to a narratology of human resource management themes ?
Once upon a time, there was a perfect firm with a marvelous manager, valiant wage-earners and heroic white-collars. Their exploits were the stuff of the tales of many a noble consultant and communicator. It didn’t matter that the tales gleamed so brightly no one could see through them — words wreakmagic.
We rewrite the past for current purposes, we create a fallacious consensus, and in more general terms, we prepare people to accept a social policy. The players in this game (researchers, consultants, practicians) might be interchangeable — this warning signal should not go unheeded.
 
 

Are small businesses responsible for the fact that growth does not create many jobs?
Bernard Girard

A characteristic of the French economy is that growth creates relatively few jobs. This can be set down to the weight of small and medium sized-firms, which now employ nearly 90% of private-sector wage-earners. These businesses must bear up under strong pressures that stunt their growth and make them want to remain small. Even those firms that do not feel such pressures usually pursue Malthusian policies. This argument runs counter to all the studies that see small firms as the driving force in job creation.

Creation as conversation: On Hervé Dumez's (ed.)
Management de l’innovation, management de la connaissance.
Stéphanie Dameron

In the service of the public: On Philippe Warin's Les
dépanneurs de justice: Les "petits fonctionnaires" entre qualité et équité.
Vincent Mangematin

Head of employment: On Jean-François Amadieu's Le poids des
apparences – Beauté, amour et gloire.
Hervé Laroche

Intercultural management, a factor in the success of international acquisitions and mergers?
Christoph Barmeyer and Ulrike Mayrhofer

Since ever more acquisitions and mergers are taking place in Europe and the world, the process of integrating cultural differences in crossborder operations must be brought under scrutiny. According to studies, many international alliances fail because of cultural differences between partners. The analysis of the integration process implemented by EADS
(European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company) shows that intercultural management is a key factor in making international acquisitions and mergers successful.

The surest way to make mistakes in the social sciences
Michel Freyssenet

What has happened to our finely hewn theories, which we used to hold and cherish ? Blown in the wind ? theories about the end of work, lean production,
the new economy and so many others, already forgotten. Some of them came
from Japan; others, from the United States. They were a heyday for smart publishing houses, as well as for white-collar conquistadores and state-of-the-art human resourcers. A few Cassandras grimly talked about
people being blind or infatuated, or even about the nonscientific nature of these theories. True enough, they were right !
 

A civil servant and entrepreneur in the social sphere
René Bedenne interviewed by Frédérique Pallez and Francis Pavé

Modernizing the civil service does not just mean adapting structures and
procedures to current requirements. Nor does personnel management simply
mean career management. René Bedenne understood this early on, when placed
in charge of social services at the French Ministry of Finance. Overturning
obstacles and upsetting conformism, he started out by creating holiday camps
for employees' children. Then, in the middle of a housing crunch, he founded
a public housing company in response to the personnel's needs. As a civil
servant and an entrepreneur, he broadened his actions by founding ATSCAF, an
association for the Ministry in the fields of tourism, sports and culture.