The Socio-Economic Approach to Management Revisited

The Evolving Nature of SEAM in the 21st Century

Edited by:
Anthony F. Buono, Bentley University
Henri Savall, ISEOR and Jean Moulin University

A volume in the series: Research in Management Consulting. Editor(s): David Brian Szabla, Western Michigan University.

Published 2015

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.

CONTENTS
Introduction, Anthony F. Buono. PART I: THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT: NEW INSIGHTS, NEW PERSPECTIVES. Reflecting on SEAM in the 21st Century: New Ideas, New Advances, Henri Savall and Véronique Zardet. Reflecting on Conventional Wisdom: Learning From the Database, Henri Savall and Véronique Zardet. In Search of Sustainable Firm Performance: The Socioeconomic Approach to Management Interventions, Gérard Desmaison and Rickie Moore. The Socio-Economic Approach to Management Control, Laurent Cappelletti, Murray Lindsay, and Cécile Ennajem. Socially Responsible Capitalism, Henri Savall and Michel Péron. The Importance of the Qualimetrics Measurement Methodology in Assessing the Impact of Socio-Economic Intervention, Henri Savall, Robert Gephart, and Marc Bonnet. PART II: INTRAORGANIZATIONAL INTERVENTION: SEAM IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS. Economic Recovery: From Company Restructuring to Company Reconstruction, Françoise Goter and Florence Noguera. The Time Factor in Socio-Economic Interventions: Short-Term Versus Long-Term Performance, Olivier Voyant, Alexis Roche, and Jérémy Clément Salmeron. Becoming an Artist-Manager: The Managerial Learning of a Theater Director, Isabelle Horvath and Nathalie Krief. Enterprise Resource Planning: A Tool for Understanding Hidden Costs and Performance? Nouria Harbi, Guy Saint-Léger, and Olivier Voyant. The Challenge of a Mexican SME: Mastering Growth and Preparing the Business Transmission, Véronique Zardet and Andry Rasolofoarisoa. Part III: INTERORGANIZATIONAL INTERVENTION: APPLYING SEAM ACROSS BOUNDARIES. Adaptation of HORIVERT to Architects, Renaud Petit, Miguel Delattre, and Thibault Ruat. Global-Local (Glocal) Creation of Value-Added, Frantz Datry and Amandine Savall. Cooperation Across Hospitals: Enhancing Quality While Reducing Costs, Marc Bonnet, Patrick Tabchoury, and Pierre Francois. Cooperation for New Services for Disabled People, Frantz Datry, Guillaume Fernandez, and Maïté Rateau. Steering Strategic Change Within a Network of Competitive Agricultural Cooperatives, Daniel Bonnet. Transorganizational Intervention and Meso-Socio-Economic Approach to Territorial Management: The Case of a Network of Environmental NGOs, Xavier Pierre, Emmanuel Beck, and Céline Broggio. Public Service Modernization and Socio-Economic Performance, Véronique Zardet and Samantha Rose. SEAM General Bibliography. Glossary: SEAM-Related Concepts and Terminology. About the Contributors.