Word from the Editor Practices, Relationships, Individuals, and Organizations

It has been a quarter of a century since our first issue in 1996. Our founder, Professor Taïeb Hafsi, and our skilled editors-in-chief, professors Patrick Cohendet and Bachir Mazouz, created a real epistemological community around our journal. They also made our journal a reference in the field. Internationally renowned for its quality and openness, Mi is a journal that favours the development of new researchers and the innovative ideas of our already established members. Many thanks to all three of you and to the Mi team for spreading our voice to all and for pushing the boundaries of research. Our voice is different but essential, owing to its plurality and recognition of our diversity.

Organizations are places of practice, assembly, and collaboration, while individuals are actors growing within them that cannot be dissociated from them, regardless of their status or the role they play. Here, multiple frameworks of analysis are necessary. Therefore, this issue comprises a panoply of contributions operating on several conceptual levels and drawing on frameworks that can expand the field.

First, Tillou and Al Ariss studied worker retention. Through a deep analysis of management consulting in France, the authors reveal tension in consultants-customers’ relationships that can generate both opportunities and constraints. For their part, Parak and Valéau discuss mosque management by organizations on Reunion Island. Drawing on rich and illuminating semi-structured interviews, they demonstrate the importance of levers—such as dialogue, manager selection, and a balanced economic model—in defining the links between governance and performance.

Sund and Le Loarne Lemaire conducted an ethnographic study of strategy work. They show the importance of identity for strategizing practices. By examining the configuration of risk situations, Le Bris studied leaders’ role in identifying them, as well as their ability to stop disasters from spreading. Nande and Commeiras find a connection between well-being at work and innovative performance among a sample of 400 full professors and assistant professors with psychological capital as mediating variable. Bouchmel, El Ouakdi, Ftiti, Louhichi, and Omri also focus on a mediating effect, that of corporate innovation on the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance.

Jabbouri, Schneckenberg and Truong contribute to the innovation literature by conducting a systematic literature review that delineates means-ends decoupling from policy-practice decoupling and explains when the former can occur in organizations. Garsaa and Paulet conclude that divulging the quality of ESG data has a positive effect on the CSP of listed firms. This finding is valid only for European firms for which corporate social responsibility reporting is mandatory. Focusing on the individual, Ghamgui and Soparnot base their framework on structuration theory and draw on life stories to show that entrepreneurs mobilize different scripts and structures as they imagine entrepreneurial opportunities. Barbaroux studied the development of leadership skills through simulation-based training. He employed an interpretive case study to shed more light on factors enabling simulation-based training.

Our issue ends with a review by Dupuis of the new book by Iribarne et al. (2022), Cultures et management international. Un nouveau paradigme, the results of 40 years of studies. Dupuis describes how each part of the book will please different segments of our community depending on their interests. This work is recognized for being solid and rigorous while allowing us to contextualize contemporary management.

We are delighted to share this issue of Management international with you. It presents rich contributions to a field where the passion of its authors and journal staff and especially of our community are unwavering.

Enjoy your reading. Thank you for your loyalty and commitment.