Contenu du sommaire : Prix de thèse 2008

This paper analyses financial exclusion which is understood as the process by which a person cannot live a normal life because of difficulties accessing or using financial products. Exclusion is understood as the result of a tension between the social necessity for all to use financial services, and the profitability constraint which financial institutions have to deal with. The influence of the quality of financial services on the situation of households is assessed in relation with the institutional context in which it takes place.

The coexistence of various performance pay schemes is usually associated with the diversity of firms' characteristics. This explanation is nevertheless not sufficient. The diversity of the payment schemes also matches the existence of various types of workers. Heterogeneous workers in terms of ability and intrinsic preferences such as social preferences may maximize their utility under a specific payment scheme. It is theoretically and empirically proved that workers self-select into different types of organizations depending on their ability level and also on their social preferences. Moreover, the heterogeneity of workers contributes to the efficiency of the market if the workers self-select into different organizations.

This dissertation is based on understanding the increased interest in individual coaching in companies today. In an exploratory approach, we conducted three studies. The first study is an analysis of the coaching offer to the market. Two case studies allow us to dig into these questions in two different perspectives: “upstream” the use of coaching on an industrial site where the top management is considering the opportunity to implement it at the manager's level, and “downstream in a consulting firm where associates have been using it on a voluntary basis. Based on our analysis, we defend the following thesis: the interest in coaching is related to its malleability which allows management to maintain a certain vagueness for the reasons of its use by the various protagonists of the coaching plan, to respond to the rules of organizational “play”, resting on the mobilization of “I”. This malleability places the practice in tension between different poles, opening spaces of power in the organizations. As a synthesis of the managerial implications of the thesis, managerial grids put into light the different interests in coaching, associated to a variety of roles played by coaches in organizations today.

The purpose of this doctoral research is to show that the customer's participation to the service delivery process makes the related service experience the core of the formation of service brand image. The central hypothesis suggests that, besides communication and the number of lived experiences, the way of living these experiences impacts the strength and the nature of brand image.The methodology is based on two main studies: the first one is an exploratory qualitative study. It has been conducted with 8 costumers of IKEA according to the verbal protocol method. The second one is a confirmatory quantitative study. It is based on a sample of 2716 individuals knowing the IKEA brand.The main contributions of this research are the conceptualisation of service experience from customer's point of view and the illustration of the interest of its integration into service brand strategies.

A group of researchers agrees in thinking that the Convention Theory is suitable for describing how these organisations operate, and to diagnose or explain the problems met by specific organisations (Batifoulier and De Larquier, 2001: 17). The Convention Theory has many contributions that are of interest both to the organisation and to the individual. This model can be used to explain the market and the organisation, the institution and the entrepreneur, the explicit and implicit rationalisation, corporate governance and organisation, political and social aspects of the organisation. The productiveness of this theoretical stream doesn't hide its operational issue in management science.By the way, the aim of this article is to present the main operational forms already used by scholars and to propose a link based on a key moment for the conventions, the one of the organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to show that within a systems dynamics approach it is possible to reconcile the positivist determinism and the management sciences constructivist project, this relying on the “Securities - Liquid assets – Projected cash flows” conceptual model. The challenge is to set up systemic links between the management practices and these two well known methodological approaches in order to form a pragmatic understanding. This helps solving the economic self production issue and not to dissociate solely objects between themselves and from their environment. The latter process leads to a blind and cost killing perception originating crisis such as we know them.