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Our Strategy : Interview with Noel Amenc (02/2007)
| Noël Amenc, Ph.D., Director of EDHEC Research and Development Department since October 2005, explains how the EDHEC Group will implement and extend the "Research for Business" strategy in the coming months. |
How will the Research for Business strategy be implemented ?
We have to ensure that our management research corresponds to the needs of the corporate world. That may seem obvious, but in fact it is a revolution because, up till now, any research carried out has only been evaluated by academics and disseminated primarily to other scholars. Research subjects and themes were chosen with publication rather than any potential social benefit in mind (What will interest the editors? How will this fit in with current thinking in research?).
EDHEC's strategy is to break away from this purely academic vision of research to favour an approach where business and society are at the heart of the researcher's concerns. Academic publication is not an end in itself. It is a validation of the scientific quality of any research work conducted, and it should not mask the question of the utility of the work. How will this Research for Business revolution be organised within EDHEC ? EDHEC's research strategy is just one component of the overall development of the school's strategy. For this reason, our department must satisfy the same objectives as the other EDHEC business units, namely to: - contribute to increasing our income as this is the basis of our independence and of the sustainability of our activities; In order to constitute them, we had launched a call for tender at the end of 2005 allowing EDHEC professors to create the teams that were able to reach excellence on the strategic objectives described above. |
What objectives have been fixed by the Research and Development team for this strategy of research for business? On the basis of contributing to the school's key strategic success criteria, the research and development team has clearly defined as its objective to position EDHEC as one of the three leading French Business schools and one of the top 25 European business schools in the rankings concerning research in academic institutions. Moreover, we wish to preserve our role of opinion leader. For the last three years, EDHEC has been quoted in the five major international economic publications--the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal (Europe and Asia), the Economist and Business Weekmore often than any other continental European business school. These ambitious objectives will require considerable resources !
And we will mobilise these resources! For the academic year 2006-2007, more than 7.5 million euros were earmarked for this activity. Over and above financial resources, we believe it is the mobilisation of the teaching staff which will make the difference in the end.
An ambitious communication policy was set up and stimulates the researchers whose greatest reward is the dissemination of their results.
EDHEC has innovated with the concept of the EDHEC Position Paper. This is a collective commitment not only on the part of the research team but also the whole institution to research results that are brought to the attention of companies and the society at large. As such, EDHEC took a position on the privatisation of the French motorways; on the causes of the collapse of the hedge fund Amaranth; on employment policies for senior citizens; on the consequences of the implementation of the new IFRS accounting standards and the prudential apparatus Solvency II on the financial management of insurance companies; on the inadequacies of the MiFID directive; on the limitations of performance-related remuneration in the civil service; on the eligibility of hedge fund indices within the framework of UCITS3; on the promotion of equality between the sexes in French and European policies; on the financial and operational risks of hedge funds; and on the limitations of Kotler-style marketing.
'Research' and 'marketing' are wholly compatible. The debate between the market and science is completely irrelevant in a leading business school! |
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