Managerial innovations: Stakes and Prospects
Innovations managériales : enjeux et perspectives
Published on Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Abstract
Innovation is at the heart of European policies, particularly since the Lisbon process. Then the European Union tried to strengthen its international competitiveness by setting up a “Europe of knowledge”. Innovation has become an imperative and the governments have implemented specific policies for targeted incentives. The scientific production about this topic has been developed. The conference propose both to continue the questioning about managerial innovations whose conceptual contours are now clearer and in better approached, and to share some analysis of systems implemented in different countries to facilitate their emergence and transmission. It is also to examine the conditions of implementation of managerial innovations adapted to public and non-profit sectors.
Announcement
Argument
Innovation is at the heart of European policies, particularly since the Lisbon process. Then the European Union tried to strengthen its international competitiveness by setting up a “Europe of knowledge”. Innovation has become an imperative and the governments have implemented specific policies for targeted incentives. The scientific production about this topic has been developed.
In this context, organizations, companies and governments or NGOs have sought to innovate to improve their competitiveness, their profitability, their products or services. The managerial innovations, broadly understood as the introduction of practices, of processes, or of methods of management, organization, control or evaluation, that create or not new structures within the organizations, are part of the general context, while the performance, their measurements and their effects are at the centre of strategies.
After product or process innovations, and strategical management innovations, the managerial innovations are now in the heart of many studies, and even have been shown by some researchers as the only possible innovations today to create a long-term competitive advantage (Hamel, 2007). In the public and non-profit sectors that have undergone profound changes in recent years, the attempts to reform up-bottom have amply demonstrated their limitations. For some (Brunetière et al., 2013), the public managers should therefore be considered as major actors for the implementation of innovative approaches and creative initiatives in the management process that can help to meet the challenges present and future.
However, international studies are quite rare as well as the cross-approaches, particularly regarding to the mode of dissemination of these kinds of managerial innovations, at European level.
The conference propose both to continue the questioning about managerial innovations whose conceptual contours are now clearer and in better approached, and to share some analysis of systems implemented in different countries to facilitate their emergence and transmission. It is also to examine the conditions of implementation of managerial innovations adapted to public and non-profit sectors.
Schematically, it is possible to consider two categories of managerial innovations. The first one can be specific, for example, to improve an aspect of management (HRM, Marketing, Controlling, Logistics, Information Systems, Organization, etc..), often from a technological innovation (ICT for example) or imported from another disciplinary field (psychology, engineering, sociology...) or with a transfer from a management speciality to another (the service project as a way of reorganizing used to increase the involvement of agents). It is in both cases an adaptation of an external innovation to the domain of management.
But it can also be some more general innovations related to any management system, the management as a whole (governance, missions of enterprise – social responsibilities of enterprise – structuring), that origin is inside the field of management (cf. Toyotism) and is based more upon the profile and the psychological qualities of the managers (divergence, creativity, empathy), as in the previous cases, than upon the qualities of administrators... In this case, we can find some innovations based on forms of exploitation different of the existing rather than new forms of exploration (March, 1991).
It is necessary; obviously, to distinguish the part of the organizational mimicry in the implementation of innovations and, therefore, their actual relevance. In accordance with the typology of d’Orleans, the mimicry could be informational, normative or self-referential. Without even taking into account the phenomena of fashion about the managerial methods and the ideological conformism, the understanding of the origin of the innovation and of the form of its adaptation largely explains the difficulties of the implementation, of resistance and of discrepancies between the ambitions and the reality of the project results
The form of the diffusion of innovation is not trivial in its acceptance and its integration by the organization. One of the difficulties in the implementation of the managerial innovations in public administrations often comes from feeling of the agents about the imposed steps by management or supervision.
Thus, to define as objective the establishment of managerial innovations, it is implicitly to raise the question of the progress in the various types of work organizations. However, the progress for many private and some public services managers is not a goal in itself and one can wonder if the managerial innovation can actually enable organizations to extract a more important capital gain with other types of working methods and an increased rationalization of production methods and governance? Maybe we can think, with David Graeber, that a certain number of jobs are “Bullshit jobs” and many of them would be related to the management, so perhaps they only exist to “occupy” people?
Managerial innovation is not a simple redefinition of the work organization, of the services, of the reporting forms, of the modes of negotiations... Moreover, it appears that whatever the type of organizations, they continue to produce (and sometimes more and more in some sectors), burnout, suicide, increased division of labour, unemployment, despair, etc. It is therefore appropriate to ask whether the managerial innovation can give meaning to work and really allow more participation and citizenship in the heart of organizations or if it has become a presentable outer garment of the capitalist mode of production.
The objective of the conference is to compare the different approaches of the managerial innovations, with a sharing and exchanges between specialists from different countries.
Another objective is, taking account of the European policy, to measure how the EU or the Member States’ policies can initiate managerial innovations, possibly of the second type.
Main themes
The conference will address the different problematic following:
- The managerial innovations in a transverse approach for businesses, taking into account its determinants, the roles of institutions and actors and the impacts on economic and financial performance and in terms of human resources for SMEs as well as for large, local, national or international businesses; also, the analysis of the links between systems of cooperation, eg about sustainable development or inter-organizational, and the implementation of managerial innovations.
- The managerial innovations in the public and non-profit sectors. In particular, it appears that, in particular, the New Public Management is perhaps more an innovation of first type, with the insertion into the public sector of private elements; a central question is to know how to introduce and to develop some innovations of the second category within the public and non-profit sector. How, for example, encourage entrepreneurship within public administration while preserving the meaning of public policy and, therefore, what type of training or organizational arrangements could be put in place for this purpose?
- International and intercultural dimensions of the approaches of managerial innovations in different countries.
Submission guidelines
Conference languages
Presentation: Bulgarian, English, French,
Contributions: English, French
The proposals for papers (title, summary of the proposal – 150 words – 4-6 keywords, personal presentation of authors) should be sent
before the April, 25th, 2014,
both to Sonia Vateva: soniavateva@gmail.com & Gilles Rouet: gilles.rouet@gmail.com
A publication will then be realised in France and/or Bulgaria.
Scientific committee
- Annie Bartoli, ISM, UVSQ
- Georgi Chobanov, Université de Sofia
- Thierry Côme, Université de Reims-Champagne-Ardenne
- Tsvetan Davidkov, Université de Sofia
- Faridah Djellal, Université de Lille 1
- Serge Dufoulon, Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble
- Henrik Egbert, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences
- Philippe Hermel, ISM, UVSQ
- Christelle Perrin, ISM, UVSQ
- Stela Raycheva, ISM, UVSQ
- Gilles Rouet, Institut Français de Bulgarie, ISM, UVSQ
- Sonia Vateva, Université de Sofia
- Teodor Sedlarski, Université de Sofia
Bibliography
- Birkinshaw, J., Hamel, G., & Mol, M., 2008, “Management innovation”, Academy of Management Review, vol. 33, p. 825-845.
- Brunetière, J.-R., V. Chanut & S. Vallemont, 2013, « L’imagination managériale des cadres publics. Un talent à cultiver » Collection profession Cadre Service Public, Éditions SCEREN-CNDP.
- Damanpour, F. & Aravid D, 2011, “Managerial innovation: conceptions, processes, and antecedents”, Management and Organization Review, pp. 1-47.
- Graeber, D., 2013, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”, at <http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/>.
- Hamel, G., 2006, “The why, what and how of management innovation”, Harvard Business Review, p. 74-84.
- Leroy, F. et alii, 2013, « L’innovation managériale », dossier spécial de la Revue Française de Gestion, 6 (N° 235).
- March, J. G., 1991, Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,Organization Science, 2(1), p. 71–87.
- Mol, M., & Birkinshaw, J., 2009, “The sources of management innovation: When firms introduce new management practices”, Journal of Business Research, vol. 62, p. 1269-1280.
Subjects
- Europe (Main category)
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology > Social anthropology
- Society > Economics > Management
- Society > Sociology > Economic sociology
Places
- Sofia, Bulgaria (1000)
Date(s)
- Friday, April 25, 2014
Attached files
Keywords
- innovations managériales, stratégie d'entreprise, politiques européennes, structures d'entreprise
Contact(s)
- gilles rouet
courriel : gilles [dot] rouet [at] uvsq [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- gilles rouet
courriel : gilles [dot] rouet [at] uvsq [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Managerial innovations: Stakes and Prospects », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, April 16, 2014, https://doi.org/10.58079/pw1
