Collective Dynamics and Territories (eBook)

9 Issues for Competitive, Innovative and Sustainable Territories

Anne Albert-Cromarias, Therese Albertini, Patrice Terramorsi (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-30076-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Faced with global economic, social and environmental challenges requiring us to go beyond individual actions, the development of collective dynamics is the ideal response. From this perspective, territories, which have long been neglected, are now asserting themselves as breeding grounds for innovative and relevant forms of organized action in response to shared experiences.

Bringing together more than twenty researchers in strategic management, human resources management and marketing, Collective Dynamics and Territories offers, through nine territorial issues (innovating and regenerating territories, building environmental action, attracting and retaining talent, etc.), insights into the conditions and modalities for developing collective dynamics within territories.

The success of local collective dynamics depends on support for the actors involved, from situation analysis to problem definition, including idea generation, selection, implementation and evaluation. This book offers a comprehensive, systemic and operational vision for analyzing and acting on collective territorial dynamics.

Anne Albert-Cromarias is Senior Lecturer of Strategic Management at ESC Clermont Business School and researcher at CleRMa, France.

Thérèse Albertini is Professor of Marketing at the University of Corsica, France.

Patrice Terramorsi is Senior Lecturer of Human Resources at the University of Corsica, France.

Textauszug

Introduction
Managing Territorial Dynamics: Why? How?

I.1. People and territories: an unquantifiable harmony

From time immemorial, people and territories have maintained a relationship that combines measure and excess. It is in this dialectical relationship that the living theater of human societies is formed, with its share of hubris, conflict and predation.

Originally nomads, seeking the resources necessary for their subsistence in ever-changing environments, humankind gradually became sedentary. This occupation of progressively domesticated spaces went hand in hand with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as the beginning of modern social organization (Cauvin 1977). This period also corresponds, according to a number of researchers (Ruddiman 2003), to the beginning of the Anthropocene era (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), characterized by the fact that “Human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature and are pushing the Earth into planetary terra incognita” (authors’ translation, Steffen et al. 2007)1. Indeed, over time, the burden of human activities on the planet has led to profound disruptions that are now affecting both physical (e.g. global warming, extreme weather events) and ecological (e.g. reduced biodiversity) balances (Crutzen 2006).

In this movement linking people and territories, the industrial revolutions represent a significant break. The technical, scientific and social developments of the 18th and 19th centuries opened up new horizons, while at the same time increased humans’ insatiable appetite. The territory, dominated as it has perhaps never been, is now the site of ever larger and more efficient factories (see, for example, Ford’s giant factories on the Red River site in Michigan, built between 1917 and 1928)2, and also of the unbridled exploitation of the natural resources necessary for modern society, be they coal, copper or oil.

Globalization marks another turning point. The scope of human activity then changes scale, bringing with it an unprecedented increase in the production of wealth, and also in the impact of human activities on the planet. The grounding of the Ever Given, a container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for several days in March 20213, and the shortage of medical devices and basic pharmaceutical substances in many countries as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic show better than any words how often profit optimization is the only variable of choice, and how illusory this limitless world can be. Consumed by the economic and financial activities, the “world territory” needs to be populated.

In this context, from ecological transition to innovation, competitiveness, employment, training, solidarity and the creation of the Commons, the territorial dimension is now everywhere. It expresses the urgent need for humankind to rediscover its bearings, so that it can take measure of its actions and face up to the unprecedented challenges it faces.

I.2. Management Sciences and further better relations between people and territories

Isolated responses are not enough to tackle the consequences of the Anthropocene. Only a global mobilization that cuts across societies and questions the relationship between humankind and the Earth is likely to enable us to develop responses that are both acceptable and relevant. In order to achieve this, all scientific disciplines, from education to engineering, to geography and biology, need to be mobilized.

How do the Management Sciences fit into this? How can they, often accused of being an extension of ultra-liberal thinking, shed light on the paths to harmonious development of human activities within territories? Before outlining these answers, which will be further developed in this book, we need to look back at the very concept of territory and its gradual appropriation by the Management Sciences.

Initially considered to be negligible, the territory, conceived solely as a geographical space, was gradually integrated by standard economic theory as a variable enabling companies to benefit from comparative advantages. The aim is to optimize the location of activity in order to “locate where it will be most profitable” (Porter 1990). Despite Marshall’s pioneering work in 1890 on the location of industry and the effects of industrial concentration, it was not until the 1970s that the territory became the focus of renewed interest.

With the oil shocks putting a stop to the growth of Les Trente Glorieuses4, and thus to the development of ever larger and more international companies, the virtues of “small is beautiful” were (re)discovered (Piore and Sabel 1984). Beyond location, it became clear that the competitiveness of organizations could be based on their ability to forge links between themselves and within a given territory. The work carried out by researchers on the industrial districts of the “Third Italy”, under the impetus of Arnaldo Bagnasco and his “disciples”, sought to explain the success of clusters of small, often family-run, companies. The concept of the Marshallian industrial atmosphere was revived. They emphasized that cooperation and noneconomic ties in the local community (Becattini 1991) were fostered by the cultural, social and political homogeneity observable in these districts (Garofoli 1992).

Subsequently, the work of the “French proximity school5” demonstrated the relevance of addressing the question of relationships between organizations in a given territory. Indeed, while the territory can facilitate or hinder the coordination of actors (Zimmermann 2008), other factors come into play in this complex interaction: socio-economic proximity (Bouba-Olga and Grossetti 2008), organized proximity (Rallet and Torre 2004), institutional proximity (Kirat and Lung 1995), cognitive proximity (Boschma 2005) and political proximity (Talbot 2010). This is followed by the search for the ideal territorial structure (technopoles, competitiveness clusters and other local production systems) to optimally coordinate the various agents according to preestablished objectives. However, in the face of prescriptive approaches, accused of being disconnected from the reality of the actors, a so-called “problem-solving” logic has emerged (Landel and Pecqueur 2016). From then on, it was no longer a question of applying a standard response to a given territory, but of accompanying stakeholders in the development of collective territorial dynamics, from the analysis of the situation to the definition of the problem, via the generation of ideas, their selection, implementation and evaluation. From this perspective, Management Science, as a set of disciplines dedicated to “analyzing and designing the steering mechanisms of organized action” (authors’ translation, David 2000), seems to be the most appropriate field of study. Bringing together 22 researchers in strategic management, human resources management and marketing, this book offers a synthetic, systemic and operational vision for better understanding, and acting upon, collective territorial dynamics. For each of the nine territorial challenges identified, theoretical and conceptual benchmarks, as well as analysis and action tools, derived from problems encountered in different territories, are presented in Table I.1.

Table I.1 Nine territorial challenges

	Territorial challenges

Chapter 1

Setting Up in a Rural Environment: A Sustainable Strategic Management Approach

Chapter 2

Organizing a Network of Actors to Preserve and/or Enhance the Common Resource

Chapter 3

Building Collective Environmental Action Within Territories

Chapter 4

Innovating and Regenerating Territories Through the Development of Ecosystems

Chapter 5

Reconciling Individual and Collective Territorial Dynamics

Chapter 6

Supporting Social Innovation Within Territories

Chapter 7

Tackling Medical Deserts in Rural Territories

Chapter 8

Identifying and Valorizing Human Resources Within Territories

Chapter 9

Attracting and Retaining Talents in Organizations and Territories

I.2.1. Challenge 1: setting up in a rural environment: a sustainable strategic management approach

The first challenge is to read the territory, in the rural sense of the term, as a strategic asset for a company. Alexandre Asselineau’s starting point is the observation that setting up in rural territories is an option that is all too often neglected, even though it can be a strategic choice with high economic, social and environmental value. Setting up in a rural environment can align resources, culture and local actors around a coherent vision, reducing production costs, enhancing differentiation and attracting talent. Through the example of the Institut de...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.6.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-394-30076-X / 139430076X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-30076-1 / 9781394300761