Anthony F. Buono

Henri Savall

This volume is part of the ongoing collaboration between the RMC series and the Socio-Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations (ISEOR), a French intervention-research think tank co-directed by Henri Savall and Véronique Zardet. Building on an earlier collaboration on the ISEOR approach – Socio-Economic Intervention in Organizations: The Intervener-Researcher and the SEAM Approach to Organizational Analysis (IAP, 2007) – Buono and Savall bring together over 30 talented intervener-researchers to explore and examine the ongoing evolution of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM). This volume revisits the application of SEAM in the context of intervention challenges in the wake of the recent economic crisis and the disruptive change that has taken hold across the world. The basic foundation of SEAM – built on the idea of strategic patience, the need to undertake holistic intervention in organizations, and the challenge to get organizational members to listen to themselves (through what they refer to as the mirror effect) – has remained the same. In response to economic and organizational pressures in the current environment, however, there has been a concomitant emphasis on helping client organizations achieve short-term results while still maintaining focus on the long term. Many ideas that have become part of the current discourse within ISEOR today were not as explicitly addressed in the initial volume – from the destructive effect of the Taylorism-Fayolism-Weberism (TFW) virus, to the need to focus on ways to ensure the sustainability of a SEAM intervention, the growing importance of collaborative interactions between external and internal consultants, and the growing importance of cocreating knowledge with client firms and organizations.

The Evolving Nature of SEAM in the 21st Century

The Socio-Economic Approach to Management Revisited

Laurent Cappelletti

This volume continues to build on the relationship between the Research in Management Consulting series and the intervener-researchers at the Socio-Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations (ISEOR) in Ecully, France, extending that partnership to our recent work with the French Foundation for Management Education (FNEGE), a foundation dedicated to closing the gap between the teaching and practice of management in France. As part of the Foundation’s multifaceted activities—which range from seminars and an advanced training initiative for French doctoral students to joint programs with international organizations an associations—FNEGE partnered with ISEOR to sponsor a series of workshops on developing high quality intervention-research. This volume is one of the results from that endeavor. Although intervention-research helps to uncover valuable insight into organizational dynamics and performance, the challenge of capturing and disseminating that insight to both academics and practitioners is entrenched in the rigor-relevance debate. While we are witnessing increased calls for “actionable knowledge,” this ideal, unfortunately, remains a rather elusive concept as critics contend either that rigorous academic research falls well-short of relevance to the practitioner world or research that proves to be valuable to practitioners falls short of the rigor expected in academic life. This volume is intended to help bridge that divide. Drawing on the FNEGE-ISEOR intervention-research workshop, the volume contains 18 chapters that explore the intervention-research process, from initial conceptualization, to implementation, to publication. The volume will be published in French and English

La Recherche-Intervention Dans les Entreprises et les Organisations

This book is written in the french language. Henri Savall gives his insight on the economic crises in organizations.

Germán Bernácer, précurseur visionnaire

Origine radicale des crises économiques

Michel Péron

Véronique Zardet

Marc Bonnet

In the current crisis context, capitalism is questioned by its detractors or defended by its partisans. The concept of Socially Responsible Capitalism (SRC) is based on the entrepreneurial spirit. It encourages exemplary behaviors, such as effective, efficient and ethical behaviors, by stimulating social responsibility of companies and organizations. This is combined with the development of economic empowerment and legitimate efforts of each citizen-actor. Socially Responsible Capitalism and Management does not confuse financial capitalism and entrepreneurial capitalism. The first one improves the creation of artificial value which leads to financial bubbles that periodically burst and bankrupt the real economy. Quite the reverse, entrepreneurial capitalism creates both solid economic value and employment. This is justified by the production of goods and services that meet legitimate needs of consumer-citizens. This book shows that by putting Human Beings at the heart of action enables producing sustainable economic value, and anthropological values which are inseparable. The innovative aspect of this book lies in its analysis starting from the macro-economic level to the individual one, by presenting a detailed analysis of the micro-economic level of companies within its managerial issues. Socially Responsible Capitalism and Management is dedicated to present the different aspects of SRC for the Society, companies and organizations and also individual actors, as citizens, producers and consumers.

Henri Savall

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