Prof. Armand Hatchuel
Ecole des Mines de Paris/FENIX Chalmers Göteborg

Armand Hatchuel is Professor of Management and Design at the Ecole des Mines de Paris and permanent guest Professor at the Fenix Center of The Chalmers Institute of Goteborg. His is also deputy director of the Center for Management Science. His research work has been about the theory and history of both management and Design. This has lead him to develope several empirical research programs on innovative firms and on knowledge creation in design processes. He has published several books (translated in english : Experts in organizations. A knowledge based perspective on organizational change, with B.Weil, Walter de Gruyter 1995) and articles and is member of the editorial boards for Organization Studies and Organization Science. He is currently member of national scientific committees in France and Sweden. In 1996, he was awarded a french large media prize for his work in Management and he received in 2003 the medal of the National School of Arts et Metiers for his work in Design theory. He is also columnist for Management issues at the french newspaper " Le Monde ".

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The pillars of Management Research: insights from the field of design and innovation

As any academic program, Management research has to clarify its specific scientific object. Yet, this definition changes overtime through theoretical maturation and empirical investigations. Traditionally, Management research borrowed the paradigms of older sciences : economic rationality, social and cultural perspectives…These paradigms helped the field to grow but with increasing limitations. The more we address the core of managerial phenomena, the greater the difficulties and the need of new theoretical instruments. The field of innovation is a good example of such dilemma. Understanding innovative processes is theoretically and practically essential to management research. Yet, in spite of a good literature we still need a better understanding of how to develope innovation capabilities in organizations.Our hypothesis is that research on innovation lacked a consistent design theory that is not part of the traditional sciences that shaped management research. Design appears as an unusual generic class of collective action which operates through the " presentation " of some desired thing that does not exist ; yet, it aims to bring to existence something, that may be different but can be " represented " for some audience. Design is neither rational or strategic planning, nor utopian thinking ; nor it can be reduced to narrative or dialogic discourse. It can be modelled as an expansive and a generative process that attempts to extend human knowledge, artefacts and relations. Design theory underlines the weaknesses of usual notions like organic, adhocratic or network structures and it explains why organized action can be innovative only under severe conditions that open the possibility of expansive processes (1). We ground these propositions on several collaborative research programs conducted at Renault in order to rethink and improve existing R&D processes. The overall logic of our results suggest that beyond economic and social sciences, the scientific pillars of management research are the basic understanding, validation and discovery of "models of collective action (2). A scientific program wich requires " discovery-oriented " methodologies, such as collaborative research, complementary to more classic ones.

(1) Hatchuel A., Towards Design Theory and expandable rationality : The unfinished program of Herbert Simon. Journal of Management and Governance 5:3-4 2002.
(2) Hatchuel A., The two pillars of new management research , British Journal of Management, Vol.12, special issue, (S33-S39) 2001.