Are management tools instrumental of socialisation and of behavioural control or can they be vectors of change? Based on four examples of the change process in companies, the author reflects on the nature and the role of management tools, considered as sources, supports or even consequences of...

Can the process of change be deliberate, planned and controlled in an organisation? Does the management of change within an organisation consist in fighting the forces of resistance and stability? Not necessarily. Change creates unforeseen confrontation between the organisation and its actors....

This article discusses a study that attempts to reach a better understanding of how the potential franchisees come to their decisions and attempts to compare this process with franchiser's perceptions. It initially focuses on the identification and on the decision-making process of French...

The literature on R&D collaboration highlights a broad set of rationales for allying with other organizations. At the same time, it has been reported that there exists a large variety of forms of collaboration. Nevertheless, the relation between the motives to collaborate and the different forms...

Refocusing deals with the tendency of the groups to grow on controlled markets. It is a result of several constraints : capital budgeting in a world sized competitive environment, maximizing the return on capital employed, taking over the goodwill for the benefit of financial investors, leaving...

A debate around the book by Denis Segrestin ("Les chantiers du manager", Paris, Colin, 2004) gives an opportunity to hope for deeper and rigorous anaytical frameworks about organizational theories of firms. Two perspectives are suggested: firms as collective action systems open to their...

The aim of this paper is to explore the heterogeneity in R&D collaborations and of their determinants and motives. Using a recent French survey on research and innovation relations, we first show the heterogeneity of such relations thanks to a typology of their characteristics: their nature...