The book. The walls of companies are porous in the face of the upheavals of the world. Published by La Découverte, The State of Management 2023 confirms to us how much the concerns that run through our society find an echo in work organisations. And, by extension, in research work in management sciences.
The book, produced under the direction of academics Sébastien Damart, Sarah Lasri and Céline Marie Michaïlesco, gives us an overview of the themes on which the researchers of the Dauphine management research laboratory (DRM) are looking, thus revealing the transformations expected in companies. . The issue of climate change occupies an important place.
In particular, the authors question the role of data communication standards (reporting) in terms of sustainable development and the weight they can have in influencing the behavior of organizations. Among the topics covered, a focus is proposed on the impact of the multiple crises that have affected the public sector. The perspective of the author of this chapter, Léonard Gourbier, focuses more specifically on the changes at work concerning management control. The lecturer in management science shows how much each upheaval observed has led to the use of new tools or new practices.
From 2008, the economic crisis thus induced a context of austerity which “resulted in the strengthening of management control, in particular budgetary control, in local authorities”. Same for the “environmental crisis”with “the deployment of green budgets” – making it possible to measure the environmental impact of public expenditure – or even to“environmental indicators”.
Multiple conversions
The public sector is also “faced with an increasingly sensitive democratic crisis”, notes Mr. Gourbier (the movement of “yellow vests” was one of the expressions). Here again, public organizations have had to adapt, “as evidenced by the explosion in the number of participatory budgets in recent years”. At the same time, a succession of reforms driven by the State since the 1990s has “introduces tools and practices from private management control into the public sector” (for example, the “service projects” defining the strategic objectives), with a view to optimizing the budget.
Faced with these multiple transformations, the author wonders: do these successive additions allow a coherent management of the administrations? Mr. Gourbier invites us to rethink the deployment of such systems. Their interconnections should be, in his eyes, more thoughtful. Furthermore, it is important that “public organizations (…) think[ent] their overall performance” – and not only in financial terms –, for example by integrating social or environmental impacts into management control.
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