- Since management practitioners as well as theorists had been doing their utmost
to separate or even to oppose the economic field and the social one, I decided
to observe what would happen within the firm if the various factors which had
been traditionally pitted against each other were to be brought together: human
considerations vs economic ones, satisfaction vs. profitability, productivity
vs. quality, financial advantages vs. qualitative ones, ethics vs. efficiency.
Thus was born the socio-economic approach to company management as early as
1973 - the conceptual case consisted in the notion of dysfunctioning coupled with that of hidden costs and performance (hidden costs for short)
- the activity of individuals, of teams or of organizations simultaneously generate an appropriate type of functioning (orthofunctioning) and anomalies
or disruptions (dysfunctioning ). Each enterprise, continually turning out efficient
products which fuel its profitability and pave the way for its development but
also experience disruptions which tend to partly absorb its energies and financial
resources, leading to reduced performances.
The financial costs of those dysfunctions are not identified in traditional
information systems of management and less still in general or analytical accounting
plans. That’s why I decided to call it "hidden costs" for if it is
true that its cause is known (the identified dysfunctioning) its financial impact
is neither measured nor supervised.
- When a firm succeeds in reducing its dysfunctions it entails an improvement
in its financial performance which is not specifically shown in accounting books;
it is a hidden performance . Thus, the more important its hidden costs
pool, the more the firm can expect an improvement of its performance through
mobilizing and valorizing its current internal resources, without resorting
to an additional external financing.
Such is the innovative socio-economic management approach we conceptualized
as early as 1973, then experimented and evaluated over years. Even then we had
to design an efficient technology aimed at its lasting implantation within firms
and organizations. We have thus built up a socio-economic intervention method
which proved to be efficacious and efficient.
Later on the question of how to maintain a socio-economic management
was raised by the firms and organizations which had set up this management method.
Practicing and scientifically observing those implantation and maintenance
of managerial systems helped in creating our field of scientific and technical
competencies: management engineering.
The quality of firm management is as vital as technology and product innovation.
Considering this challenge, would it not be sensible to carry out a fruitful
and extensive research -development in management to be jointly handled by enterprises
and management sciences researchers ?
- Research in management sciences, when it does exist, remains too fragmented,
the teams too small and not structured enough, the themes broached too pointillistic
and fashion-dependant. Scientific research and pedagogical research are also
too often confused. How can one meet the actual needs of the firm with pedagogical
research alone? An efficient management research has to be scientific. In order
to advance in the field of management, universities, schools, teacher-researchers
must tighten the interactive links of scientific co-operation with firms
and practitioners.
Research in management sciences, when it does exist, remains too fragmented,
the teams too small and not structured enough, the themes broached too pointillistic
and fashion-dependant. Scientific research and pedagogical research are also
too often confused. How can one meet the actual needs of the firm with pedagogical
research alone? An efficient management research has to be scientific. In order
to advance in the field of management, universities, schools, teacher-researchers
must tighten the interactive links of scientific co-operation with firms
and practitioners.
With the creation of our ISEOR team we
have consequently initiated a new approach to research and intervention within
the firm: fundamental research universally applicable feeding on the inheritance
of knowledge accumulated, structured and modelized through repeated experimentation
evaluated "live" within a 2 125 firms and private or public organizations
located in 46 countries on 4 continents.
2 030 000 hours of research-intervention of long duration and a strictly focused
observation in the field of more than 110,000 individuals (managers, supervisors,
shopfloor) enabled us to build up a solid managerial knowledge bank. The teacher-researchers,
members of ISEOR management teams are themselves
involved, nearly full-time, in the invigorating experimental research in the
field, at the head of their teams of actor-researchers (600 since the beginning).
The socio-economic approach also intends to help firms and organizations put
an end to the micro-experiments in improvement which rarely last and never feed
through to the whole firm.
Our research moreover leads to a diploma. Indeed, ISEOR is a supporting laboratory of the management sciences doctoral program of University Jean Moulin Lyon
3 and CNAM, Paris.
The growing demand of private and state-owned enterprises and public service enabled
us to develop a contractual research leading to self-financing, thanks
to the multiplication and renewal of the contracts signed with the users. Thus
the researchers can reach a state of full partnership inside the firm or organization,
without being dependent on the trials, tribulations, fails and limits of a research
solely subsidized or excessively academic.
Encouraged by our progressive and constant development for 38 years we keep
on enriching our knowledge bank and self constructed database with each of our experiments, fine-tuning our
program life-size. Thus we can enrich both our concepts and tools and bring
supply to a vast international observatory of the actual internal and external
life of firms and organizations networking in numerous countries.
Professor
Henri Savall, President-founder of ISEOR
Follow up: ISEOR research laboratory
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