“How business schools can deal with complex issues in response to global challenges”

Christophe Assens, Professeur des Universités et directeur adjoint du laboratoire de recherche LAREQUOI, Université de Versailles St-Quentin en Yvelines

Annie Bartoli, Professeur des Universités de classe exceptionnelle et directrice du LAREQUOI, Université de Versailles St-Quentin en Yvelines

Philippe Hermel, Professeur des Universités de classe exceptionnelle et fondateur du LAREQUOI, laboratoire de recherche en management, Université de Versailles St-Quentin en Yvelines

Almost everywhere in the world, business schools (BSs) experience a particular development dynamic, which differentiates them from most other academic disciplines. In France, for example, no less than 20% of students in higher education are enrolled in business sciences (MINESR 2017, Albouy & Martinet 2017). However, under the deceptive appearance of ease because of their great success, BSs have to face some difficult challenges, which force them to pursue contradictory objectives and to manage paradoxical situations 

 Like other university schools, BSs must fulfill a double mission (education and research), each facet of which involves specific issues. Business schools must also address two audiences, whose stakes and expectations are different: young students and managers in continuing education. In addition, the strong interdependence of BSs with their environment increase the need to constantly update their educational material, given the rapid social, economic, legal, political, technological and cultural changes of their contexts. Besides, technological innovations and the attraction of "on-line" or "open access" classes for executives, require major transformation of didactic processes.Another crucial challenge is that of globalization, which affects the entire economy and has a direct impact on education, leading to an "international market for higher education" (Musselin, 2008). This encourages competition between BSs in the world, which is reinforced by the international "rankings" of higher education. Globalization is not carried out without reference to the local context, which constitutes an additional paradox to manage: business schools must both pursue an international development strategy, and at the same time maintain their local investment. Yet, the realities of BSs are very different from one country to another, particularly in terms of regulations, role of public authorities, tuition fees, or cultural representations attached to the discipline of management. Local business school ecosystems thus reflect an astonishing diversity, especially for structures that give an impression of similarity at the international level.Faced with so many challenges, business schools generally strive to manage the paradoxes of their environments, which can be described as complex systems (Morin & Lemoigne 1999). To what extent is the management of complexity implemented in business schools? The cases of French BSs are analyzed: there are often beneficial processes of coopetition (Brandenburger & Nalebuff 1996), but also temptations to find simple answers to these complex issues, such as some mimetic approaches to Anglo-Saxon models, which evoke forms of institutional isomorphism (Di Maggio & Powell 1983).Overall, this paper aims to show that the simplifying answers often brought by French BSs to the challenges of complexity, do not in any way reflect a logic of "simplexity" (in the sense of the neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz, 2009), insofar as they often proceed by technocratic analogy, rather than by the search for new and adapted solutions. Different lines of action are examined, in order to move towards anti-bureaucracy and management by trust, within network logics where performance gains could then take on a collective dimension.