December 2020
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 142
OVERLOOKED…
Private pharmacies’ strategies for adapting to competition with “medicinal supermarkets” in Belgium
By Didier Chabanet
IDRAC Business Lyon
Steven Coissard
IDRAC Business Lyon
and Xavier Weppe
IAE Lille, University of Lille
After a long period of stability, private pharmacies in Europe have experienced major changes in recent years that are upending their traditional business model, which is mainly based on the sale of medicinals. Relatively big newcomers to the market have been authorized to sell nonprescription pharmaceuticals at cut-rate prices. This is a major source of anxiety for these pharmacies. In Belgium, which opened the capital of pharmacies to non-pharmacists, “medicinal supermarkets” started springing up as of 2014. This country provides an excellent laboratory for analyzing these changes. Semidirective interviews with 26 pharmacists and representatives of this profession have inquired into their strategies for adapting to this ever more competitive environment in Belgium. While most pharmacies have adjusted their practices without reconsidering their traditional business model for selling as many products as possible, others are developing alternative, innovative models that address and follow up on patients’ specific needs.
TRIAL BY FACT
Employees’ opinions posted on the platform Glassdoor: A critical, contextualized interpretation
By Daniel Pelissier,
IDETCOM Lab, Toulouse Capitole University
Communications about recruitment campaigns and policies have changed with the coming of the Internet and, even more, since the development of platforms, like Glassdoor, where wage-earners post their views about companies. How are these employee reviews perceived by young graduates? A review of the literature distinguishes two currents of research related to this topic. The results of this article indicate that graduates critically evaluate posted comments, in particular as to their trustworthiness. Arguments are presented about a social perception of the websites where customers post their opinions. The influence of this perception explains why these online messages are interpreted in relation to the context. This article illustrates the value and issues of a qualitative study of employees’ opinions, and proposes ways to manage this growing body of data for organizations in a tense labor market.
Conflicts of interests and alerts: A research-intervention on the impact of the Sapin II Act
By Patrice Cailleba
and Nicolas Dufour
Paris School of Business
An essential issue for risk managers is their ability to issue alerts about organizational risks and make them heard at the governing level. This question is addressed both theoretically and managerially by drawing on case studies in the insurance industry. This research discusses both this profession’s traditional, norms and, too, the risk manager’s role which, especially since the provisions against corruption in the Sapin II Act in France, is to uphold an orthodox form of management that reaches beyond the field of the law into issues related to questions of legitimacy and ethics .
Religion at the workplace: Interactions between managers and religiously observant employees
By Lionel Honoré,
IAE Brest, UBO (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
How to describe the interactions marked by religion that take place between managers and religiously observant employees? How are management and the employee’s expression of religion articulated at work? An interactionist analytical grid is used to study these questions. Based on the analysis of interviews conducted with managers and practising employees at the workplace, four types of situations are identified; and the problems of each for management are analyzed.
Bounded freedom: From small to medium-sized family firms to human resource management in a major industrial group in Europe
De PME familiales à la direction des ressources humaines d’un grand groupe européen
By Michel Villette,
professor in sociology at Agro Paris Tech and researcher at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs
Any economic system creates a type of person who is made to succeed. With reference to Hobbes and Locke, the work of the Scottish philosopher C. B. MacPherson on “possessive individualism” (1962) identified the characteristics of the accomplished agent of free enterprise: emancipation, voluntary commitments, self-ownership, the alienation of labor via market relations, and the tendency to reduce social relations to market relations. The annotated interview transcript presented herein is part of a series dedicated to the study of upwardly mobile, international careers in big firms. Insider skills, unconditional acceptance of the profession’s constraints and strong lucidity all let us glimpse the business world and what it means to be a person in search of achievement in the context of globalized capitalism.
Mosaics
“From sectoral groupings into ‘meta-organizations’
On Hervé Dumez and Sandra Renou’s How Business Organizes Collectively: An Inquiry on Trade Associations and Other Meta-Organizations ”, 2020.
By Lola Duprat
“Are we all forced to become goldfish?
On Bruno Patino’s La civilisation du poisson rouge. Petit traité sur le marché de l’attention ,” 2019.
By Antoine Masingue
“‘Social and solidarity’ firms
On L’entreprise de l’économie sociale et solidaire , a special issue of Recma: Revue internationale de l’économie sociale ”, 353, July 2019.
By Philippe Eynaud