Contenu du sommaire : La création de valeur en stratégie

The financial performance of French socially responsible mutual funds. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the financial performance of French Socially Responsible Mutual Funds (SRMF) investing in the local market equities through January 1994 to January 2007. It aims to verify if using social and environnemental criteria in the investmentd decision don't reduce portfolio performance from a retail investor perspective. The findings show a general but non-significant underperformance of SRMF compared to the French Market and a conservative attitude with regard to the market risk. However, no statistically significative difference have been observed between SRMF and conventionnal funds performances.

Use Yield Management as a catalyser for territorial attractivity of foreigndirect investment. Yield Management, developed in the early 80's, gave to the companies that usedit a competitive advantage and significant growth in profitability. This articleanalyzes how Yield Management tactics could be transposed to the attractivityof foreign direct investment by defining the chosen territory as a “product”, andsegmenting the market relied on the price sensitivity of the investor.

Individuals and project organizations : What difficulties for what solutions?. Project management is well-known for its socio-organizational advantages, among which the shortening of conception delays, the focusing on customers or the reinforcement of professional diversity. But it implies for the individuals who make it work costs in terms of career, tensions, excessive control or identity. Based on a literature review as well as a qualitative empirical study conducted within the Laguna's project team (Renault), our article aims at identifying three main difficulties and solutions that might be proposed to remedy them.

Responsibility, irresponsibility, powership. Considerations about hierarchical relationship. The hierarchical relationship is the result of the obedience demanded in organizations. It is defined by flow diagrams, but not limited by them. Crozier and Friedberg's strategical analysis of organizations distinguishes relationship, powership and hierarchical capability. Nonetheless, this theory must be completed by the definition of responsability level of the actors taking part in a relation of power, and by their capability to retaliate in case of no obedience. The probability to adopt retaliations depends on the hierarchical proximity between the person who pass and order and the one who have to obey it, and the seriousness of the retaliations. There are dysfunctions in organizations when the hierarchical relationship is excessively based on the personal characteristics of the people who pass orders, and insufficiently on the quality of the organization.

Structured reporting tools and continuous improvement practices. This article aims at providing new insights on the relation between StructuredReporting Tools (SRT) and management practices designed to encourageemployees to improve production processes. In this paper, the authors use aprincipal-agent model with moral hazard. They consider a situation whereinformation on the efforts made by operators can be observable or not by themanager based on its decision regarding the installation of a SRT. They showthat this installation is all the more profitable where the efficiency of routineefforts is high relative to the efficiency of non-routine efforts. They also showthat the effect of productivity on the installation of a SRT is ambiguous.

Strategy: creating value for shareholders. In the midst of one of the most severe economic crises since 1929, corporations urgently need to revisit their strategic mindset. Relative corporate performance on the financial markets will discriminate even more the winners from the losers. In difficult times, with the volatility of markets, shareholders value creation, measured by TSR, becomes a tough challenge, the focus of all strategic actions. The first component, the “fundamentals”, generates the cash flow, the basis for survival and the fuel to lead the industry consolidation or to finance new opportunities. The second is related to the cash flow use: retention, reinvestment or distribution? The third component, the “Multiples” will be the hardest to manage. Indeed, making the investors dream when the financial markets keep them awake at night is not an easy task.

Value creation patterns across acquisition life cycle stages. Firstly, this article aims at proposing an analysis of the stock market value creation cycle associated with an integrated approach to acquisition and divestment. Secondly, it seeks to put into light the main determinants of this stock market value creation cycle. Among the different possible determinants, a specific attention will be devoted to the impact of the acquired entity performance on this cycle.

For a more balanced (and actual) view of firms' value creation and success. Theories about firms' value creation and success mainly consider the concept of competitive advantage or explanations related to the « axis of advantage ». They offer useful results but suffer from several problems limiting our understanding of this topic and resulting in a biased idea of firms' sources of performance. We present some of these limits and several options to better take into account the role of organizational errors in firms' performance heterogeneity. Including the role of organizational errors allows to develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework and we detail some of its ideas.

Creating value... for organized crime ! Recent research has explained how organized crime penetrates the legal economic world. Building on these findings, we show that criminal risks should nowadays be integrated in strategic thinking at the top-management level of companies, in order to avoid the criminal predation of the value possessed and created by these companies. The best value-creating strategies, according to M. Montebello, are constructed with the clients and not against competitors. We argue that they should be elaborated with the clients and against organized crime, while competitors should sometimes be considered as partners to fight crime.

Management value : a new challenge for management control. Hypercompetition forces companies to continuously reduce prices of the products or services, and to improve their quality. The management of these two incompatible criteria defines the customer that Michel Montebello (2003) calls value customer. The activity-based costing was developed to deal with cost/value management. Based on the value chain analysis (Porter, 1985), its objectives are to identify value added processes, and to provide metrics to reduce their costs. Then, the performance of a company can not be explained by financial indicators exclusively. Non financial indicators are then required to evaluate competitive advantage criteria of a company. The Balanced Scorecard was developed in response to this balance need between financial and non financial metrics.