TRIAL BY FACT

Time warfare

Jean-Emmanuel Ray

Is this an article simply about how to manage time? No, it focuses on a philosophy for living. Is the goal of our existence merely to do several things and be in several places at once? Does modernity imply a preference for proliferating contacts rather than face-to-face meetings… perhaps with one’s self? What’s the purpose of all this agitation to “save” time? We risk losing those who are close and not doing what takes time — thinking, inventing or creating. Unaware of all this, the busy person tracks down whatever he can put to use to gain time and radically alters the relation between work and privacy.

WHILE READING

Egypt and the experts

Michel Callon

While reading Tim Mitchell’s abrasive Rule of experts, we are forced to change our way of looking at developmental policies, experts from international organizations, the social sciences, Egypt’s history following independence… Everything is related; nothing is neutral. Mosquitos are more dangerous than tanks; the system of land ownership is a war machine; cartography creates the economy; the CIA manipulates anthropology; “Egyptian peasants” are a pure invention for justifying the West’s “mission” in the Mid-East. To obtain a clearer view of the facts, we must decompartmentalize the social sciences and bring the natural sphere closer to the social one, technology closer to politics.

OVERLOOKED…

The paradox of “being behind” in the aerospace industry

Victor Dos Santos Paulino

Innovation, a major topic during our times, could but represent progress, as during the Enlightenment. However this presupposition is false, since inertia might turn out to be an advantage in organizations. Unlike what we might suppose, the aerospace industry is not innovating in its organizational forms and is even dragging its feet in using new information-based technology. This statement calls for qualifications of course. Engineers will not be as obsessed with organizational and technological stability depending on whether they are working on a telecommunications satellite ordered by a business or on a scientific project sponsored by the government. Inertia in an organization might be a competitive advantage for attaining an optimum of technological feasibility.

TRIAL BY FACT

Veolia Environnement: A model of hybrid organizational change

Christophe Plouvier

Till present, firms that want to act on their future had the options of transition or revolution. Veolia 2005, an efficiency plan for the “world leader in environmental services”, lies at the center of a new model combining an evolutionary with a radical approach. While profiting from the advantages of both types of change and making up for each other’s shortcomings, this hybrid model is not just a mixture. Is it evidence of a real change or of organizational hypocrisy? By observing the plan’s place along the margins in the organization, we measure the model’s limitations: the project team’s lack of legitimacy, not enough involvement by concerned parties, differing approaches to control over management…. Nonetheless, a dynamic synergy in Veolia Environnement is taking place between the two approaches, probably owing to a very special context — whence the impossibility of generalizing.

MOSAICS

 
Michel Villette: On the difficulty of referring to practices: On Michel Berry’s Managements de l'extrême (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2006).

Jean-Michel Saussois: Foucault and management: How are they related? On Armand Hatchuel, Éric Pezet, Ken Stackley and Olivier Lenay’s Gouvernement, organisation et gestion: L'héritage de Michel Foucault (Quebec: Presses de l'Université de Laval, 2005).

 Alain Henry: Mythology of the “Moderns”: On Philippe d'Iribarne’s L'étrangeté française (Paris: Seuil, 2006).

 Marie-Anne Dujarier: Psychology at labor’s bedside: On Dominique Lhuilier’s Cliniques du travail (Paris: Éditions Érès, 2006).

OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES

 
The "joint adventures” of French small and medium-sized businesses in China: A case study, 1994-2004

Michèle Dupré and Étienne de Banville

What if small companies tempted by international business were condemned to no longer remain small? As we know, a small or medium-sized firm that does not have an eye on the world market lacks prospects. Therefore, boldness, self-questioning and imagination are needed in abundance in order to make the inevitable switch toward globalization. Uniting forces does not suffice however. Woe to those who unite without any real strategy for conquest! Soon overtaken by events, they must launch a call for new associates who will not hesitate to alter structures, replace white collars, look for new clients and develop complementary activities: this is the condition for the survival of joint ventures, which eventually escape from the control of those who set them up.

 
Reforming public research in Japan: An overhaul

Hiroatsu Nohara

The thorough, ambitious reform of public research in Japan intends to rejuvenate the country’s economy. For this purpose, approximately thirty universities are to be created to become the “best in the world”. How far from just after WW II, when any ties between industry and research were suspected of fostering “Japanese militarism”! A radical change of mind has taken place: the competitiveness of Japanese universities worldwide is based on the excellence of their research in certain fields (in particular: biotechnology, computer science, new products and medical research) and, above all, on contractualizing relations with industry and founding startups. The government is inventing new rules: autonomy in managing budgets, personnel and patents; an obligation of performance; and no longer treating researchers like civil servants. Japanese universities must now reconcile the differing time frames of basic research and profit-making activities.