Professor at TBS Education since 2010, Servane Delanoë-Gueguen became the Dean of TBS Education on September 1st. Her new role within the faculty is the culmination of this entrepreneurship expert’s constant commitment to the development of the school and the success of its students.
Servane Delanoë-Gueguen has a PhD in entrepreneurship from the Open University (UK) and an MBA from the Mc Combs School of Business (University of Texas). Servane Delanoë-Gueguen started her career in finance at Goldman Sachs, where she held the position of VP of Fixed Income Sales and Trading, before moving on to entrepreneurship as the head of a start-up project.
Recruited by TBS Education as a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship in 2010, she was in charge of the M2 Entrepreneurship and Business Development from 2013 to 2018, before managing the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation department from 2018 to 2021.
SPEARHEADING SEVERAL PROJECTS
Deeply involved in educational innovation, Servane Delanoë-Gueguen has contributed to several structuring projects reinforcing the strengths of TBS Education around business initiatives and support for young creators. In particular, she co-created the TBSeeds incubator, a project dedicated to TBS Education’s student entrepreneurs, that she managed from 2012 to 2016. She has also supported TBS Education’s engagement in the Babson Collaborative network and the partnership with Babson College (USA), a global reference in entrepreneurship where she was a member of the Advisory Board. More recently, she spearheaded SEMIS, the Master in Management Program’s entrepreneurial initiation seminar, which offers a learning methodology based on experimentation, stimulating creativity, agility and the students’ collective intelligence. This innovative program received a Spotlight Award from Babson Collaborative in 2020.
Servane Delanoë-Gueguen has also published many articles in French and international academic journals such as Management Decision, the Journal of Small Business Management, the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, the “Revue de l’Entrepreneuriat” and the “Revue Internationale PME”.
NURTURING THE DEVELOPMENT OF EACH INDIVIDUAL
As Dean, Servane Delanoë-Gueguen will contribute to the deployment of TBS Education’s strategic plan, whose tenets involve the faculty directly: educational well-being, new campuses, research, new training models.
“Today, I want to put my varied experience and skills to work for the institution in a different way. Faced with unprecedented challenges, the world of higher education must innovate and reinvent itself. Through my new role, I wish to contribute to developing the solutions TBS Education will bring to these challenges. I will of course make supporting our professors a guiding principle of my mandate, so as to enable each of them to flourish in his or her career and to contribute to an education that best prepares students for contemporary challenges. It is an honor to have been chosen for this position and I look forward to joining a superb, dynamic and ambitious team.”
– Servane Delanoë-Gueguen, new Dean of TBS Education
“Servane Delanoë-Gueguen joins the management team that I am fortunate to lead. She will work alongside me to raise our school to its highest level of academic excellence and maximize the employability of our learners. Her personality, background, and academic and entrepreneurial skills will be tremendous assets in supporting the school’s development.”
– Stéphanie Lavigne, Managing Director of TBS Education
TBS Education’s Inspiring Guest project is in the spotlight for its innovative approach to teaching finance. After winning the Best Session Award at the AOM Teaching and Learning Conference and the Best Innovation Strategy Award from AMBA, it has been awarded the FMA Innovation in Teaching Award!
2021 FMA Innovation in Teaching Award
The Financial Management Association International‘s (FMA) Innovation in Teaching Award was created to recognize inspiring educators, improve the quality and relevance of education in finance and spread successful innovative practices. This international competition is open to any educator who teaches undergraduate or graduate students in finance.
The finalists are selected by a committee based on 3 criterias:
Innovation
Broad transferability of the teaching technique in terms of resources and instructor skills/connections
Measurable impact on students, institutions of higher education, and the finance profession
David Stolin, co-founder of TBS Education’s Inspiring Guest program with Elie Gray, received the 1st prize for their project “Teaching finance through short humorous videos made in collaboration with a comedian”.
Injecting humor into teaching finance
TBS Education is constantly exploring unconventional teaching methods, favoring pedagogical innovation for the benefit of its students. The Business School offers a wide range of technics to acquire knowledge and prepare for the business world. By offering an innovative approach to teaching, we capture students’ attention, make the content more memorable and develop their agility.
The first edition of Inspiring Guest project is developed around educational videos staring the Californian comedian Sammy Obeid. Not only the stand-up comedian is the host of “100 Humans” on Netflix but he is also a UC Berkeley Math & Business graduate.
The success of this first edition exceeded the expectations of the pedagogical team. Fully satisfied with the outcome, the Business School is currently preparinga new exciting edition of TBS Inspiring Guest.
Gilles Lafforgue has been appointed member of the Commission on the Economy of Sustainable Development (CEDD) of the French Ministry of Ecological Transition. The title of qualified personality for his economic expertise was awarded to him in this context. Very involved in the research sphere in terms of sustainable development and recognized for his economic expertise, this professor-researcher at TBS Education had participated in the French Carbon Commission from 2017 to 2019. His involvement and the recognition of his high skills are confirmed with this new appointment.
The role of the Commission on Sustainable Development Economics
The CEDD was created on November 10, 2020 at the initiative of the French Prime Minister and the French Minister of Ecological Transition. It succeeds the Economic Council for Sustainable Development. The CEDD provides assistance to French public decision-makingon sustainable development from an economic perspective.
The mission of this consultative commission is to provide insight into the fields of the environment, energy and climate, transportation and housing. To do this, it relies on the analysis of statistical data and the comparison of economic analyses, the development and evaluation of public policies in these areas.
The objective of the “Environment” group
The professor-researcher will participate more specifically in the work of the “Environment” group, whose objective is to examine and discuss the economic accounts of the environment (monetary and physical flows relating to natural environments, natural resources, the circular economy, or the reduction of emissions and consumption).
11 new professors from all over the world are joining our school.
Ireland, India, Portugal, France, the United States, Russia, Colombia, Brazil and Switzerland join the many nationalities already at TBS to support and train our students!
We are pleased to welcome this year:
Antonio ABRANTES, Business Law & HR Management
Simon BELIERES, Industrial organization, logistics and technology
Together with a group of international colleagues from the 5C Collaborative (www.5c.careers), I studied employability, defined as an individual’s perception of being able to find alternative jobs in the external labor market. I have studied this subject with particular attention to older workers, as individuals are forced to work longer in their lives; paradoxically, however, as they age, they face great discrimination when seeking or re-employment. We conducted a survey in 30 countries and collected responses from over 9,000 people employed in managerial or professional jobs. By analyzing this data, we were able to show that older workers perceive a disadvantage in terms of external employability, but that having experienced development activities throughout their career mitigates this situation.
GDPR Compliance in Light of Heavier Sanctions to Come: at Least in Theory
[su_pullquote align=”right”]By W. Gregory Voss & Hugues Bouthinon-Dumas[/su_pullquote]
Ridiculously low ceilings on administrative fines hindered the effectiveness of EU data protection law for over twenty years. US tech giants may have seen these fines as a cost of doing business. Now, over two years after the commencement of the European Union’s widely heralded General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the anticipated billion-euro sanctions of EU Data Protection Authorities, or ‘DPAs’, which were to have changed the paradigm, have yet to be issued.
Newspaper tribunes and Twitter posts by activists, policymakers and consumers evidence a sense of unfulfilled expectations. DPA action has not supported the theoretical basis for GDPR sanctions—that of deterrence. However, the experience to date and reactions to it inspire recommendations for DPAs and companies alike.In our working paper, EU General Data Protection Regulation Sanctions in Theory and in Practice, forthcoming in Volume 37 of the Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal later in 2020, we explore the theoretical bases for GDPR sanctions and test the reality of DPA action against those bases. We use an analysis of the various functions of sanctions (confiscation, retribution, incapacitation etc) to determine that their main objective in the GDPR context is to act as a deterrent, inciting compliance.
To achieve deterrence, sanctions must be severe enough to dissuade. This has not been the case under the GDPR as shown through an examination of actual amount of the sanctions, which is paradoxical, given the substantial increase in the potential maximum fines under the GDPR. Sanctions prior to the GDPR, with certain exceptions, were generally capped at amounts under €1 million (eg £500,000 in the UK, €100,000 in Ireland, €300,000 in Germany and €105,000 in Sweden).
Since the GDPR has applied, sanctions have ranged from €28 for Google Ireland Limited in Hungary to €50 million for Google Inc in France, far below the potential maximum fine of 4% of turnover, or approximately €5.74 billion for Google Inc. based on 2019 turnover. While the highest sanctions under the GDPR have been substantially greater than those assessed under the prior legislation, they have been far from the maximum fines allowed under the GDPR.
Nonetheless, this failure of DPAs, especially the Irish DPA responsible for overseeing most of the US Tech Giants, has not gone unnoticed, as shown by EU institutional reports on the GDPR’s first two years. Indeed, increased funding of DPAs and greater use of cooperation and consistency mechanisms are called for, highlighting the DPAs’ current lack of means. Here, we underscore the fact that, in the area of data protection, there has been perhaps too much reliance on national regulators whereas in other fields (banking regulation, credit rating agencies etc), the European Union has tended to move toward centralization of enforcement.
Despite these short-fallings, the GDPR’s beefing-up of the enforcement toolbox has allowed for actions by non-profit organizations mandated by individuals (such as La Quadrature du Net that took action against tech giants after the GDPR came into force), making it easier for individuals to bring legal proceedings against violators in the future, and an EU Directive on representative actions for the protection of consumer collective interests is in the legislative pipeline.
On the side of businesses, there has been a lack of understanding of certain key provisions of the GDPR and, as compliance theorists tell us, certain firms may be overly conservative and tend to over-comply out of too great of a fear of sanction. This seems to be the case with the GDPR’s provisions regarding data breach notifications, where unnecessary notifications have overtaxed DPAs. The one-stop-shop mechanism, which is admittedly complex, also created misunderstanding.
This mechanism allows the DPA of the main establishment in the European Union of a non-EU company to become the lead supervisory authority in procedures involving that company, which potentially could lead to companies’ forum-shopping on this basis. However, there is also a requirement that the main establishment has decision-making power with respect to the data processing to which the procedure relates. Failure to consider the latter requirement could result in companies selecting main establishments in countries where there is not such decision-making power, and thereby halt attempts at forum-shopping for a lead supervisory authority for certain processing. One example of this culminated in the French DPA (CNIL)’s largest fine so far, imposed on Google, whereas the latter argued that the Irish DPA was its lead supervisory authority.
As we explain in our paper, a lack of GDPR enforcement carries risks. Not only does it undercut the deterrent effect of the GDPR, but it also provides a tenuous basis for risk assessment by companies. While the GDPR’s first two years involved a sort of grace period when DPAs focused on educating companies and spent time painfully investigating complaints to litigation-proof their cases, some companies model their risk assessment of regulation based on enforcement histories. If there is a push for greater enforcement, which EU institutional reports would tend to foreshadow, the basis for companies’ models will be inaccurate. Furthermore, such dependence on risk evaluation ignores potential benefits to firms of increased trust and efficiency involved with expanding compliance to adopt a higher data protection compliance standard applied to customers worldwide.
Thus, we argue, not only should DPAs sanction offenders, but DPAs should sanction them severely when justified, establishing the necessary deterrence effect for EU data protection law. Moreover, DPA’s communication should in many cases be modified to stop downplaying sanctions: such communication is counterproductive to the desired effect of sanctions. Companies, on the other hand, should take efforts to understand fully the GDPR, and embrace compliance, leaving behind data protection forum-shopping as a potentially ineffective action. Furthermore, the typical securities lawyer warning that, ‘past performance is no guarantee of future results’, may be a forewarning to companies using past sanctions to create their compliance risk-assessment models that the results may not be accurate for the future.
Gregory Vossis an Associate Professor in the Human Resources Management & Business Law Department at TBS Education.
Hugues Bouthinon-Dumasis an Associate Professor in the Public and Private Policy Department at ESSEC Business School.
This article originally appeared on the Oxford Business Law Blog (OBLB) and is reproduced with permission and thanks.
Discover TBS professor Louise Curran’s point of view on the effect of COVID-19 on international trade policies.
As COVID-19 has spread across the world it has had major impacts on supply chains. It is reasonable to assume that the impact on trade flows may be even greater than that for the GFC in 2009, where world trade fell by over 20%. Most of this is an entirely natural result of the closure of many production structures around the world. However, some trade impacts are the direct result of trade policy interventions by governments, which presage a more major and long-term impact from the current crisis. Discover more in the video below:
Discover TBS professor Timo Mandler’s point of view on building brands in markets that have reached the post-globalization stage.
Consumers in Western markets are increasingly critical towards globalization and re-embrace local values. Companies thus must decide whether to continue to pursue global branding strategies and/or rejuvenate local branding strategies. To explore the implications of market globalization for consumer preferences, we use signaling theory to investigate the role of perceived brand globalness and localness as signals of brand credibility, related downstream effects and boundary conditions, across two countries with differing levels of globalization. In globalized markets, brand globalness is a weaker signal of brand credibility than brand localness, whereas in globalizing markets, the two signals are of equal importance.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]By Denis Lacoste[/su_pullquote]Based on the article “La recherche dans les écoles de management apporte une réelle valeur ajoutée” – Published in News Tank.
While the relevance of research in business schools is now widely recognized, two criticisms resurface from time to time and cast doubt on this faculty activity.
The first criticism concerns the synergy between research and teaching. Detractors state that business schools, under the pressure of accreditations and rankings, pay consequent amounts to resident professors whose sole activity is to conduct research. The task of teaching is therefore left to non-research teachers, which implies that students don’t benefit from the skills of the most expert professors in their discipline.
The second criticism deals with the very nature of research. Academic journals select articles based on academic rigor. They don’t take into account their interest for practitioners. Students have no interest in joining a school whose research will be of no use to them.
In an article published last October 25th in News Tank, I show that these criticisms erroneously depict the state of research in business schools for at least three reasons.
First, rankings and accreditations don’t only take into consideration research performance, far from it. Consequently, business schools do not base their entire policy on this sole component: they evaluate teachers using many other criteria such as quality of teaching, innovation, engagement, institutional involvement, managerial responsibilities ….
Second, if the most active researchers have indeed lighter course loads (which is a common practice in higher education), it is wrong to say that students do not benefit from their skills. Many business schools have defined a minimum threshold for teaching hours, which cannot be crossed by any teacher, regardless of his/her research activity.
Finally, most of the research articles published in the best-ranked scientific journals have managerial implications and are selected with this criterion in mind. In addition, schools are increasingly aware of the impact of their professors’ research on stakeholders.
All in all, questioning research in business schools on the grounds that researchers do not teach and that research is not relevant does not hold up to serious scrutiny. On the contrary, over the past fifteen years, research in business schools has made remarkable progress both in terms of quantity and quality, and fully contributes to the schools’ success with students and companies !
Before giving fund managers credit for good work, check how much of it could have been done by a monkey.
Photo: David Slater via Wikimedia Commons
Monkeys can surprise you. This photo of a crested black macaque is a selfie. Aside from photography, monkeys are reputed to be surprisingly good at picking stocks. In his now-classic 1973 book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Princeton University professor Burton Malkiel wrote that “a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.” In recent years, research showed that monkeys (or, more precisely, randomly-generated stock portfolios) significantly outperform the stock market over the long run.
Monkey portfolios generally outperform the market
What may seem to be monkeys’ great handicap – their utter lack of interest in publicly traded companies – turns out to work to their advantage when it comes to portfolio formation. The stock market index represents companies in proportion to their size and is therefore dominated by large and fast-growing firms. By contrast, randomly selecting stocks into a portfolio tends to allocate more money to smaller and less glamorous companies, as well as breaking the link between portfolio weight and recent performance. Over extended periods, this blindness to company characteristics is rewarded with better investment returns. (While the reasons for this are subject to debate, overvaluation of in-vogue stocks seems to be one plausible explanation.)
Active managers exploit the “Monkey Effect”
If being oblivious to what’s going on in the market is what it takes to beat it, then you may not need a professional stock picker to manage your money. Or at the very least, you shouldn’t give investment managers credit for “the monkey effect” in their performance. This is the basic premise of our recent research paper.
Our approach is simple. On average, the performance of randomly chosen portfolios over the market index is similar to that of a portfolio where all stocks are weighted equally. We therefore study the correlation between the performance of active fund managers’ investment portfolios and the spread between equal-weighted and market-weighted portfolios’ performance. This can tell us how much of a fund’s performance could be replicated by mechanically tilting its portfolio toward an equal-weighted one. Of course, we also control for a range of other factors that have been known to impact investment returns.
Our results are striking. The equal-weight tilt is common among more than one thousand US mutual funds seeking to beat the S&P500 market index, and its extent is a key factor in explaining fund performance. On average, the size of the tilt is equivalent to investing 20 to 30% of a fund in an equal-weighted portfolio. Recognizing this fact in performance evaluation lowers the average fund’s risk-adjusted performance by as much as 0.7% percent per year.
Isolating the “Monkey Effect” in manager performance
Why might actively managed portfolios have a tilt toward equal weights? There are two possible explanations. One is that fund managers do this intentionally as they are aware that portfolios with random or equal weights generally outperform the market. Another is that this tilt is an unintended byproduct of their investment process (for example, the hit-and-miss nature of stock analysts’ recommendations could be analogous to throwing darts). Regardless of the underlying cause, an investor can acquire an equal-weight tilt much more cheaply than delegating the task to an expensive active manager – it is enough to combine a passively managed index fund (which can have fees of as little as 0.02% per year) with an equally-weighted one (with fees of as little as 0.2% per year).
After a series of legal and public-opinion battles, the credit for the monkey selfie was deemed to belong to the photographer; he did, after all, go to the trouble of travelling to the jungle, befriending the monkey, and setting up the camera – all necessary steps for us to enjoy the surprising photo. But when you come across surprisingly good performance by active fund managers, think twice whether they should get the credit (and the fees). Hint: they shouldn’t if a monkey could do it.
Methodology
The authors evaluated the investment performance of actively managed U.S. mutual funds benchmarked against the S&P500 market index over the 1980-2009 period. They focused on the performance evaluation impact of including the spread between equal-weighted and market-value-weighted portfolios’ returns alongside established factors commonly used to assess fund performance. The article, titled “The equal-weight tilt in managed portfolios”, was published in Economics Letters in June 2019.
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