TESTIFYING

See far, act fast

Xavier Fontanet, president of Essilor International, interviewed by Frédérique Pallez and Francis Pavé

How to head a company formed out of a merger between a workers’ cooperative and a family business? How to manage a world group with a single product whose executive staff has national roots? This is the story of Essilor. Negotiating with stockholders, selecting the best, managing different “cultures”… its leaders do not hesitate to be present on all fronts. Since time is now as precious as gold, the key strategic weapons for Essilor’s top officials are: the agenda for executive meetings, permanent anticipation and speedy reactions.

OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES

Logan in the tracks of the 2 Ch?

Jean-Louis Loubet

Why design a “cheap” car when automakers are dreaming of manufacturing luxury vehicles? What marketing studies led Citroën to bring out the 2 CH; and, sixty years later, Renault, to bring out the Logan? Who was bold enough, during each period, to design a product that would change habits and shake up certitudes? The road was long from an ambient scepticism to the excitement of actually making a low-budget car. Engineers pulled out all stops to find ways to manufacture at a lower cost. However Citroën hardly believed that the 2 CH would be a success; nor did Renault think that the west European market would show any interest in the Logan. Is success a divine surprise?

 
DEBATES

The value of incompetence: From the criminal to the academic mafia — a methodological approach

Diego Gambetta (a debated transcribed by Hervé Dumez)

For the mafia, regulating criminal marketplaces through violence is not a satisfying economic choice; it is better to do this through ties of dependence. Does the university mafia apply the same principle? Since a person owes even more to the extent that he is incompetent, the temptation is strong for a “mandarin” to choose only the incompetent so as to maintain his own control. Fidelity comes to count more than merit. Woe betide whoever is nearing retirement! They do not have enough time left to return favors, since they are on the way out and will soon be powerless. But what if someone is only feigning incompetence?

 
TESTIFYING

 
The Catholic Church and its bishops during an era of strategy and management

François Mayaux and Laurent Ulrich

Can a diocese be run like a firm? No, since a bishop has a spiritual role to fill. Beyond his temporal duties, he has to be accountable… to God! But how to revive a “business” that has experienced a drop in the number of baptisms, church marriages, practising Catholics and priestly callings? How can a bishop balance the books when church offerings are drying up and when a quarter of the diocese’s budget is devoted to expenditures related to real estate? The Church is going to have to make choices and professionalize operations. Is it going to sell its soul?

OVERLOOKED…

Coping with violence in the workplace: The shelf

François Grima and Renaud Muller

The avowed intention to harm — a classical motive in detective movies — is also frequently part of the scenario in firms, which have no qualms about shelving employees. How to cope with this? Should the person remain and organize his defense so as to put up a fight, or should he leave? A shelf is not a cocoon. Harassment takes several forms; violence is graduated. The workplace becomes a place of suffering… and a vantage point for observers interested in violent practices inside organizations. What if all these methods were a flexible modality of employment that is less visible than the contingent workforce?

 TRIAL BY FACT

Designing indicators out of knowledge stemming from multiple practices: The case of biodiversity

Harold Levrel

How to design indicators for a hard-to-define scientific phenomenon that very few scientists have observed? Doing this in the case of biodiversity is a wager. Nonetheless, CRBPO (Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité des Populations d’Oiseaux) has designed a system of indicators (Stoc, Suivi Temporel des Oiseaux Communs) for following up on the dynamics of bird populations. Developing this system meant, first of all, reckoning with the costs of transactions between local organizations of ornithologists, volunteer or professional, and proposing a common language for reducing these costs. It then entailed an inquiry into information needs in order to develop a sufficiently flexible tool that can evolve. Finally, it called for trusting users and taking the risk of entering into competition with other systems.

 
 
IN QUEST OF THEORIES

Did you say “human capital”?

Fabienne Autier

Wage-earners are not yet familiar with the phrase “human capital”. In the near future however, head offices might need to reconsider everything having to do with the firm’s “government” in relation to this sort of capital. Mostly immaterial and inseparable from its holder, human capital is going to shake up both human resource policies and control. Now as vital as financial capital, it should be the focus of investment programs and be reckoned with in terms of overhead and amortization. We might even imagine recruitment policies and a “knowledge economics” based solely on this criterion. Firms could be increasingly distinguished between the ones that try to minimize human capital and those that accept to pay a fair price for it.

MOSAICS

Jean-Baptiste SUQUET: Ideal workers in an ideal organization: On Marie-Anne Dujarier’s L'idéal au travail (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006).

Jean-Marc WELLER: Technical democracy: On Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis’s Les briseurs de machines: De Ned Ludd à José Bové (Paris: Seuil, 2006).

Arnaud TONNELE: Changing the way of looking at unemployment: On Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg’s Le chômage, fatalité ou nécessité? (Paris: Flammarion, 2004).