The TBS Education bachelor’s in management is a three-year international program, ranked as the #1 Best Bachelor’s degree in France. It grants a recognized French Higher Education Degree (“Grade de Licence”) in International Business and Administration. June, a Norwegian student, shares her experience at TBS Education.
TBS Education’s bachelor’s in management offers an innovative academic curriculum focused on both professionalization and international exposure. By the end of the program, students can complete up to 12 months of internships, gaining valuable professional experience. In their third year, they can choose from nearly 20 specializations such as Digital Business, Innovation Management, Event Management, Fashion & Luxury Management or International Business Management, to tailor their education to their career goals.
“I was searching for business schools in France, and when I discovered TBS Education, I immediately felt it was the right fit. The program offers a well-balanced curriculum that blends theoretical learning with real-world applications, making business education both accessible and engaging. Plus, the school’s strong international reputation and diverse student community made my decision even easier!”
With four campuses in Toulouse, Paris, Barcelona, and Casablanca, along with over 130 partner universities, the Bachelor in Management provides students with a truly global education. Students spend a semester abroad in their second year and can pursue a specialization or a double degree in an international setting.
Courses are taught in English, and with more than 88 nationalities represented on campus, TBS Education offers a genuinely multicultural experience.
“I am really looking forward to taking advantage of the international opportunities that TBS Education provides. It’s an exciting experience that I can’t wait to explore!”
TBS Education hosts numerous student associations that foster engagement and help students integrate into campus life. With 2,000 students, 40% of whom are international, the program offers a rich cultural exchange across its four campuses, all located in cosmopolitan cities renowned for their energy and vibrant student life.
“From the very first day, I felt warmly welcomed. The international student community is strong, and the French students are open, friendly, and eager to connect with us. The school organizes many activities and events that help international students integrate smoothly. As for student life, Toulouse is an amazing city! It’s lively, full of history, and has a great student atmosphere. There’s always something happening—whether it’s social events, cultural experiences, or simply enjoying the beautiful surroundings with friends.”
The Master of Science (MSc) programs at TBS Education are designed to equip students with all the necessary skills to become experts in their field and position themselves as key assets in the job market.
The school offers 17 MSc programs, all recognized by the French government and awarding a Master’s degree. This diploma is not only recognized in France but also internationally, thanks to the school’s triple accreditation.
In addition to top-tier academic training, TBS Education promotes an immersive learning approach, allowing students to gain real-world professional experience.
This is exemplified by the MSc Aerospace Management, offered at the Toulouse campus, which participated in a 21-week project titled Cross Masters Air Travel Project.
This project focused on the theme: “Towards More Sustainable Tourism”, with a particular emphasis on enhancing Toulouse’s tourism appeal through the involvement of the region’s major airports: Toulouse-Blagnac Airport and Toulouse Francazal Airport.
In collaboration with these airport infrastructures and the University of Toulouse, 37 students from 18 different nationalities worked together to develop innovative and feasible recommendations. Topics covered included:
Students applied various research methodologies (site visits, qualitative and quantitative surveys, interviews, documentary research, etc.) to propose concrete and innovative solutions.
This project allowed them to address a real and relevant issue while developing their skills and professional networks.
In Barcelona, students from the MSc Digital Transformation & Business Innovation conducted a consulting mission for Noè Builders, a subsidiary of the Coco-Mat group, specializing in sustainable wooden house and hotel architecture and construction.
The goal was to perform a market analysis, assessing competition and proposing strategic recommendations to support the company’s market growth.
This two-week mission enabled students to:
They were mentored by Xavier Gasso, a university professor, and Júlia Farré Fernández, a professor and consultant in strategic and business development.
These two projects illustrate TBS Education’s commitment to training its students not only on the academic level but also on the professional level, equipping them with all the tools they need to stand out in the job market.
Congratulations to all teams and students for the successful completion of these ambitious projects!
Each year, TBS Education offers its students a unique experience blending innovation and professional development: the Hackathon. For the 2024 edition, MSc Data Science & Artificial Intelligence and MSc Digital Transformation & Business Innovation program students worked on the theme: “Generative AI for Wellness: Personalizing Pierre Fabre Solutions.” This event perfectly illustrates TBS Education’s commitment to preparing students to address contemporary challenges while combining academic knowledge with practical application.
To professionalize its students, TBS Education collaborates with renowned industry partners through its Hackathon. This year, Microsoft and Pierre Fabre bring their expertise to provide a professionally enriching experience for the students.
Microsoft is the educational partner for the event, introducing its generative AI tool, Copilot Studio, to enable students to create innovative solutions. The company is also providing expert staff to provide technical support.
Pierre Fabre, a key actor in the healthcare sector, is taking on the role of client by proposing a concrete problem, data, and technical support for the event.
‘Pierre Fabre is already a partner of TBS Education and, specifically these days, our company is a partner of this hackathon which, for us, is part of an inter-partner approach as Microsoft is our technical partner and TBS Education is one of our academic partners.’ Clara THIBAULT.
The Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence & Business Analytics will also be taking part. This is a real asset for students, enhancing both their professional and academic experience.
‘The Centre of Excellence in AI and Business Analytics is TBS Education’s reference point for the development of training, multidisciplinary research and collaboration around artificial intelligence, mainly involving teachers, students and numerous industrial and academic partners. This Hackathon specifically highlights the current theme of generative AI, in collaboration with Microsoft and Pierre Fabre, offering students a concrete opportunity to acquire practical skills and come face to face with the realities of the field.’ TCHUENTE Dieudonné, TBS Education Professor-researcher
The main objective is to immerse students in a concrete and stimulating professional environment, while offering them skills that can be deployed on the job market.
Students explore the use of generative AI to produce solutions adapted to contemporary issues, the structuring and exploitation of data to feed artificial intelligence, and the creation of a product or service that meets the needs of an entrepreneurial client. This approach enables them to gain first-hand experience, which is essential for their future careers.
‘We proposed various themes and in the end it was a marketing and consumer- focused theme that was chosen, as it was the most in tune with the different classes present today. We also made data available to the students and provided support during the hackathon through coaching, not technological support, but rather around data.’ Clara THIBAULT
The Hackathon 2024 was held from 9 to 13 December in Toulouse, on the TBS Education campus. This intensive program combines masterclasses, working sessions and final presentations in front of a panel of experts.
Day 1: Inspiration The first day allows students to attend talks on technological trends and market challenges, followed by a presentation of the issues by Pierre Fabre. A masterclass led by Microsoft on the principles of generative AI and the use of Copilot Studio, followed by a fun integration session, is also offered to the students.
Day 2: Ideation Teams dive into the world of prompt engineering through workshops and mentorship provided by Microsoft and Pierre Fabre. They begin crafting their prototypes, exploring innovative solutions aligned with the provided data.
Day 3: Execution On the third day, students test their low-fidelity prototypes, guided by expert mentors and TBS faculty, ensuring a solid foundation for their solutions.
Day 4: Validation During the validation phase, students test their prototypes with potential clients and gather feedback to refine their solutions. They also receive training on pitching techniques to effectively present their projects.
Day 5: Pitch Day The final day culminates in project presentations before a jury comprising representatives from TBS Education, Microsoft, and Pierre Fabre. This step showcases students’ ability to address real-world challenges with innovative solutions.
In addition to the academic aspect of the event, students also benefit from a highly professionalising experience, working with companies such as Microsoft and Pierre Fabre, and participating in the resolution of a real issue.
‘What I got out of this event was the energy of students, their understanding and interpretation of the subjects. They bring a lot of new approaches to the issues and come up with solutions that are off the beaten track. This freshness provides me with an enriching experience, both from a marketing point of view and from the approach, and, finally, from the perspective of data processing and how that data can be used. It also helps, and I say this with a lot of conviction, to strengthen their resumes, because, in a few days, they have a concrete case to think about, and that is valued by employers. It takes them away from theory and brings them back to a practical level, where they are faced with a customer. I think it’s also a good way for them to get their first real-life experience. ‘ Clara THIBAULT
By leveraging real-world tools and challenges, the TBS Education Hackathon stands out as a pivotal step in shaping future professionals. It reflects the school’s educational philosophy: blending academic excellence, technological innovation, and real-world immersion.
This unique experience offers students much more than an academic project—it equips them to tackle the challenges of their future careers with confidence and expertise.
The Hackathon is part of one of TBS Education’s main objectives, which is to professionalise its students and strengthen its links with renowned companies by proposing solutions adapted to their needs.
This unique experience offers students much more than just an academic project: it prepares them to meet future professional challenges with confidence and expertise.
UNIVERSEH is a European project co-financed by the Erasmus+ Program. Under the coordination of the University of Toulouse, TBS Education is part of the alliance alongside 4 universities (University of Luxembourg, Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Luleå University of Technology and AGH University of Science and Technology Krakow). The project aims to foster student employability by providing them mobility opportunities and innovative pedagogical tools in order to develop their skills in line with the spatial labor market needs.
The Artic Winter School was a 6-day event (February 27th to March 4th) organized by Luleå University of Technology at the Kiruna campus in Sweden. Lectures, workshops, study visits and conviviality moments rhythmed the schedule focused on climate change and the space field in the Arctic region. Students with various background came to Kiruna from the 5 universities of the alliance to exchange and learn about these subjects.
TBS Education joined the UNIVERSEH Arctic Winter School by sending two students on the Master in Management Program. Meet Lisa & Corentin and learn more about their experience at Kiruna and at Luleå University.
“My name is Lisa de Paoli, I’m 22 years old and I’m in my gap year at TBS Education. After two years of preparatory classes I joined TBS Education in L3 and I continued in the Audit DSCG course.”
“Hello, I’m Corentin and I’m currently in a gap year. I have done 2 years of preparatory class before TBS Education and my second semester of Master 1 in the US.
I’m currently in Paris doing an internship and will be back in Toulouse in September 2023.”
Corentin: “In November 2022, I received an email saying “Opportunity for Sweden” or something like that. Although I am usually drowned with email from school this one drew my attention. It was the first time I heard about UNIVERSEH. Quickly after receiving this email, I checked the project’s website and thought it was very interesting.”
Lisa & Corentin: “Our main motivations were to discover the Arctic, its northern lights and meet international students. It was a very enriching week from a personal and professional point of view. It allowed us to develop our knowledge about the Arctic region and to develop our critical point of view on several subjects.”
Corentin: “You will have stars in your eyes. And I think we can really say it. The landscape was amazing, snow everywhere, northern lights every single night.”
Lisa & Corentin: “The day after our arrival, we suddenly left the dinner to rush outside and see our first aurora borealis. To admire them better, we decided to make a small hike on the Kiruna Mountain. The climb took more than 2 hours, we had lost the way and the wind was getting colder and colder. Finally, we arrived at the top and could admire the northern lights without light pollution. This moment was completely magic.”
Lisa: “I hope! We still have an oral to take and a quiz to complete. But I hope to somehow stay in touch with the students and the school!”
By David Stolin
On March 31, 2005, Lehman Brothers chairman and CEO Dick Fuld was re-elected to the company’s board with 87.3% investor support. Four years later Mr. Fuld was ranked as “the worst CEO of all time” by Portfolio magazine, and widely described as having professional and personal qualities that contributed to Lehman’s collapse – and, due to Lehman’s position at the heart of the financial sector, to the international financial crisis.
We do not know how every Lehman shareholder voted in that election, much less the reasons for how they voted. We do know that around two-thirds of Lehman’s stock was held by other prominent financial institutions, the top ten being Citigroup, State Street, Barclays, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Vanguard, AXA, Fisher Investments, MFS, Mellon Bank, and Merrill Lynch. Most of these firms and their managers would be expected to have repeated dealings with Lehman and its management. As a result, we would expect these firms to be particularly well-informed about Mr. Fuld’s shortcomings and to have voiced concerns about his ongoing concentration of power.On the other hand, the combination of Mr. Fuld’s shortcomings and his power made him a formidable enemy. He is on record as saying “I want to reach in, rip out their heart, and eat it, before they die” about his professional adversaries.
It is a stimulating thought exercise to visualize Mr. Fuld’s reaction upon learning that, say, Citigroup or Merrill Lynch had voted against his re-election to Lehman’s board. We note that at Lehman, like at the vast majority of U.S. firms, voting was not confidential. This means that Lehman’s management could find out how each of the company’s shareholders voted. And this would raise a problem for Lehman’s institutional investors: even if they disagree with the management, is it worth incurring the management’s wrath by voting against it?
Of course, it is natural for managers to be unhappy with shareholders who vote against them. But for at least three reasons, such feelings matter more when the investee company is in the financial sector.
• The first reason is the “old boys’ network”. Decision-makers at the investing firm are especially likely to be connected to their counterparts at the investee if both have finance backgrounds: they are more likely to have received the same education, to be active in the same professional organizations, to have worked at the same companies in their past careers, and to expect to do so in the future. This increases the potential for retaliation (or reciprocation) at the individual level.
• The second reason is firm-level interaction. Financial firms are more likely to have competitor or supplier/client relationships with their investors than do non-financial firms. This means that retaliation and reciprocation can be channeled through such relationships as well.
• The third reason is cross-holdings of shares. A financial firm may hold shares in its own institutional shareholder, which gives the firm another potential means of retaliating for any anti-management votes by that shareholder, namely, voting against the shareholder’s own management. Conversely, investor and investee may reciprocate by supporting each other through voting.
How can we examine if our suspicions are founded? The only group of institutions systematically required to disclose their votes is U.S. mutual funds, and accordingly we focus our study on mutual fund companies. Our empirical tests suggest that all three types of conflicts of interest listed above do matter. Social ties between the voting and target firms increase the voting firm’s support for the target’s management. In addition, voting appears to be influenced by the fear of retaliation, both in the form of being voted against in the future and of being aggressively competed against in the future. Our results suggest that there is “clubbiness” in the way fund companies vote on each other. We then go on to examine the implications of this clubbiness. We show that directors elected in fund companies with greater own-industry support, monitor senior management significantly less.
To generalize our findings, we then use aggregate voting outcomes to assess whether financial companies as a group vote more favorably when it comes to their financial sector peers and we find that this is the case as well.
In short, the financial sector’s inevitable and extensive investment in itself has a deleterious effect on its governance. What can be done about it? We believe that our work has at least two important policy implications.
First, the notion of conflicts of interest which institutional investors address in their voting policies should be explicitly defined to include not only client/supplier relationships, but also conflicts of interest through product market competition and reciprocal investments. Such recognition would help take voting out of the hands of individuals most inclined to vote in a conflicted manner, or at least constrain these individuals’ discretion.
Second, proxy voting should be required to be confidential at firms in the financial sector; i.e. investee firms should not be able to discover how different shareholders voted. This would mitigate a key reason for conflicted voting, which is potential retaliation/reciprocation by the investee’s management.
It would be naïve to think that decision-making in business can ever be rid of conflicts of interest. But in the case of proxy voting in financial firms, the problem is important enough to deserve a close look from regulators.
Afin d’enquêter sur les conflits d’intérêts entre les gestionnaires d’actifs, les auteurs ont étudié la procuration de votes des fonds communs de placement sur des propositions de gestion d’actifs. L’étude couvre la période 2004-2013 et les variables explicatives étaient les fonds, la société et la relation fonds-société. Ils ont également analysé les résultats des votes rattachés. L’étude a été publié en Mars 2017 en la version papier du Management Science Journal.
By Pierre-André Buigues and Denis Lacoste
French car-makers exported fewer and fewer cars over the course of the first decade of the 2000s. At the start of the 2000s, PSA was exporting 54% of its French production and Renault 47%.
Ten years later, that percentage had dropped by over 20 points for PSA; Renault’s case is even more critical since the company has even started importing vehicles to France. Today, Renault now produces fewer vehicles in France than it registers! And France now has a significant trade deficit in the car sector; the last surplus was in 2004!
Absolutely not. Indeed, during this same period, French manufacturers invested heavily in building assembly plants abroad. In the early 2000s, the number of cars manufactured by Renault and PSA abroad represented about 70% of domestic production. In 2010, the ratio of foreign production to domestic production was close to 170% for PSA and almost 300% for Renault.One might think that these developments are related to macroeconomic and monetary conditions in the Eurozone. However, when you look at the development of German car-manufacturers’ strategies over the same period, it is clear this is not the case. Between 2000 and 2010, we can see that Volkswagen’s exports remained stable while Mercedes and BMW’s exports rose.
Specialists in business strategy generally agree that the choices made for an international development strategy are determined by two key factors: the company’s competitive advantages and the economic conditions affecting production in the home country.
The competitive advantages of French manufacturers. . Basically, industrial companies can choose between strategies based on low production costs or differentiation strategies based on technological innovation. A low-cost strategy drives companies to delocalize a significant part of production to low cost countries. On the other hand, a differentiation strategy generally goes hand in hand with increased exportation, because the competitive advantage is based on R & D and hence on the high-level expertise that is only available in developed countries. Companies that opt for a low-cost strategy will look abroad for cheap labor whereas those who base their strategy on differentiation will be less affected by the higher production costs linked to domestic production and can draw on the positive effects of the interaction between production and R & D.
In the case of the car industry, there are considerable differences between the innovation strategies of French companies – which seek to set up production abroad – and German companies, which maintain a high level of exports. At the start of the 2000s, Volkswagen was already investing more than twice as much as Renault and PSA in research, and in 2010, Volkswagen’s research budget was three times greater. If we specifically look at the R&D content of each vehicle sold, there is naturally a quite significant technology input with high-end manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW (more than €2,000 per vehicle), but this is the case even with mid-range manufacturers; the R&D content in a Volkswagen car is 20% higher than that of Renault and 45% greater than that of PSA. Again, the gap widened during the first decade of the 2000s; the increase in R&D expenditure per vehicle is significantly higher in German-made cars compared to French-made cars.
The economic conditions in France The more or less favorable domestic business environment, particularly in terms of cost, also has an impact on their choices in terms of international development. What about the French car industry? What are the differences between the French and German environments? If we look at things on a very general level, we see that the hourly labor costs for manufacturing in general increased by 38% in France, compared with only 17% in Germany, during the first decade of the 2000s. If we look closer at the car sector, we can note that productivity per employee was lower in Germany than in France in 2000, but that productivity increased sharply over the decade in question, while it decreased in France. In 2008, employee productivity was 25% higher in the German car industry compared to France. This can be explained by the fact that French car manufacturers have made little investment in France, their priority being their overseas factories.
Even though we may bemoan the extremely negative consequences in terms of employment and the creation of wealth in France, French car manufacturers made strategic choices that are coherent in terms of international development in view of their low R&D expenditure, their medium- and low-end positioning and the unfavorable domestic production conditions in terms of cost. However, it is not surprising that French manufacturers’ profit margins are lower than those of their German counterparts. For example, over the period 2000-2010, the operating profit per car was €635 for VW and around €250 for Renault and PSA.
Unfortunately for French international trade and the employment market in France, the car sector is not an isolated case. France has far fewer companies that export than Germany, and the share of exports in French GDP is almost two times lower. On the other hand, France has more large multinationals than Germany (14 companies in the world’s top 100 compared with 10 for Germany) and these French multinationals have a larger proportion of their workforce abroad than their German counterparts.
Consequently, for France to become an “export country” once again, it would take a radical change in the strategic positioning of companies located in France as well as more favorable production conditions in the country.
Written by P.A. Buigues and D. Lacoste. The information in this text is taken from the following articles: “Les déterminants des stratégies internationales des constructeurs automobiles européens : exportation ou investissements directs à l’étranger” (Determining factors in the international strategies of European car manufacturers: exportation or direct investment abroad? ”), published in 2015 in the magazine “Gérer et Comprendre”, written by the authors in collaboration with M. Saias M, and “Les Stratégies d’internationalisation des entreprises françaises et allemandes : deux modèles d’entrée opposés” (International business development strategies of French and German companies: two opposite input models), written by the authors and published in “Gérer et Comprendre” in 2016, as well as their book “Stratégies d’Internationalisation des entreprise” (International Business Development Strategies), published in in 2011 by De Boeck.
The database was essentially built using information published by the manufacturers in their annual reports, as well as data provided by the French Automobile Manufacturers’ Committee (CCFA), the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA) and by Eurostat. The data relating to international business development, strategies and economic conditions were analyzed over the entire 2000-2010 period.
This study shows that any assessment of a company’s choice in terms of international development cannot be cannot be conducted without analyzing other aspects of its strategy (particularly in terms of positioning) and the economic conditions in the company’s home country. The study also suggests that foreign investments are not necessarily the best way forward in terms of international development. The case of the car industry shows that it is possible for a company to keep a significant part of its production in its home country while remaining efficient, even in a global industry.
By Servane Delanoë-Gueguen
When looking at business creation, people tend to take more interest in the project than in the entrepreneur behind it. However, starting a business has strong personal implications. Assessments of personalized support programs would be more relevant if they paid greater attention to gauging how entrepreneurs feel about their ability to see their project through to completion, particularly as regards the strategic and financial aspects.
What drives someone to want to start a company? Obviously there is the initial project, which may or may not result in the creation of a start-up, but above all there is the individual behind the project, the budding entrepreneur, who will end up transformed by the experience, whatever the result. The process is a form of apprenticeship, during which the business creator acquires new skills, develops new ways of looking at things, and builds networks. If the individuals manage to create their business, this personal transformation will provide them with valuable skills for the company’s development. If not, they will be able to draw on these newly-acquired skills to prepare an entrepreneurial project later in life, or to use their new knowledge working for someone else.
People with new business projects do not have to go through the process alone. They are even encouraged to participate in support programs, which may have a profound impact on the project as well as the person behind it. Unfortunately, when assessing such programs, this personal dimension is rarely taken into account: to evaluate their effectiveness, we tend to focus on the participants’ satisfaction with the program or the fact that they managed to create their business, but not on the effects that the programs have had on the budding entrepreneurs. Our study looked at people participating in a support program set up by Brittany Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI). The aim of the study was specifically to analyze this personal impact. Rather than focusing on the project leader’s actual skills, we studied their perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy , i.e. how the individuals perceived their ability to create a business.
This perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy – originally developed in the field of psychology – is a key determining factor in the process of creating a company, because not feeling capable can be a major obstacle. If properly evaluated, it can even foster the entrepreneur’s tenacity in the face of difficulties. However, this remains a perceived ability, which is not necessarily representative of the actual ability; indeed, certain individuals have a tendency to underestimate their abilities whereas others overestimate them. Finally, the perception can change, according to four major influences: personal experience, observation of others, verbal persuasion by third parties and emotional state.
The study sought to measure the change in the perceived self-efficacy of budding entrepreneurs who took part in a support program by interviewing them at the beginning of the project, and then a year later. While we might expect participation in a personalized support program to have a positive effect on entrepreneurial self-efficacy (that is to say, the project leaders feel more capable of creating their company), the results of the study actually show an overall decrease in self-efficacy. If we look in more detail, the only positive impact was on entrepreneurial administrative self-efficacy – concerning the planning of the project and formalities – whereas perceptions related to strategy and finance tended to deteriorate.
These results can be explained by what we could term a “reality check”. At the start of the process, many budding entrepreneurs think that the administrative side is highly complex and focus on this aspect; then they realize that this is not actually the most complicated aspect, particularly since a number of measures have simplified business-start-up procedures over recent years. At the same time, they start to realize how difficult it is to find customers and funding, that there are competitors in the market, and that they never have enough time to do everything. All these aspects are often under-estimated when they build their project.However surprising it may be, this result shows the value of having an objective assessment of start-up support programs, by focusing on the personal impacts: the aim of support programs is to help people with start-up projects set up viable businesses and understand the realities of the market, not to simply ensure that the majority of the individuals actually start their businesses. With this in mind, it is not necessarily a bad thing for prospective business creators to feel less capable at the end of the process than at the beginning. Participants who ultimately decide not to start their business, after appreciating the importance of having a customer base and a network, have the opportunity to ask themselves the right questions, to readjust their perceived ability, and sometimes realize they are simply not made to be entrepreneurs. They will be better equipped for the next project, or at least thy will have more realistic perceptions.
This evaluation method is a valuable tool for improving support programs, with practical uses that can be taken advantage of almost immediately. For example, it may be interesting to adopt a differentiated approach depending on whether the people at the start of the program underestimate or overestimate their ability to create a company, in order to help them reach a more realistic self-perception. In relation to the case analyzed in this study, the support programs could focus more on strategic issues and funding.These results are a step towards achieving an objective assessment of support mechanisms for budding entrepreneurs. Now, it would be useful to fine-tune the results with a more representative sample group of budding entrepreneurs and extend the research to different types of support initiatives.
Servane Delanoë-Gueguen is a research professor in entrepreneurship and business strategy in Toulouse Business School. She is responsible for the TBSeeds incubator and is joint Head of the “entrepreneur” vocational option. She has a PhD in emerging entrepreneurship from the Open University (UK). Her research focuses on budding entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial ecosystems, business-creation support programs, entrepreneurial desire and business incubation. This publication is a summary of the article “Aide à la création d’entreprise et auto-efficacité entrepreneuriale” (Support for business creation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy”) published in 2015 in theRevue de l’entrepreneuriat.
Within the framework of her research, Servane Delanoë-Gueguen conducted a longitudinal study. Based on a literature review, she developed a theoretical model with 3 research hypotheses concerning the evolution of entrepreneurial self-efficacy over the course of one year concerning individuals with business start-up projects involved in a support program, who had ultimately created their business or not, with gender differentiation. The model was then tested with a group of budding entrepreneurs. In the first year, a total of 506 people answered a questionnaire to assess their perception of their entrepreneurial abilities. The following year, she managed to re-contact 394 of the people concerned, of whom 325 had a genuine start-up project in progress. Out of this group, 193 people answered the questionnaire again.
By Akram Al Ariss
In order to win points in the global search for talents, companies had better create a human resources policy that is attractive to self-initiated expatriates. Akram Al Ariss, research professor at Toulouse Business School, has carried out a review of scientific research on this important subject.
The scale of international migrations has been steadily increasing for many years: from 214 million in 2010, the number of people living outside their country of origin has risen to 232 million and may well increase again by 96 million people between now and 2050 according to United Nations estimates. Until now, the potential use of highly skilled talents from this population by organizations has not been paid much attention by researchers. The human resource management literature on this topic refers to these talents as ‘self-initiated expatriates’. Therefore, we use this term in the rest of this article.
Highly skilled talents who undertake an international mobility are a pool of human resources that could give host countries and companies a competitive edge in the global war for talents. This is especially the case with regard to self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) made up of individuals who have chosen to move of their own free will, and who are often highly qualified and experienced, with a rich linguistic and cultural background. But dipping into this pool first requires identifying, recruiting, developing, and retaining them as staff while satisfying their ambitions. In order to do so, companies need to devise and implement a specially-tailored Human Resources strategy.
This is particularly important for companies which are expanding internationally. For cost reasons, the classic pattern of expatriation of their employees with concomitant salary bonuses and various other benefits, has been replaced in the past few years by a more economical, “local plus” model, in which the employee resigns in order to be rehired under a local contract, with much less favorable conditions. But this system, which generates frustration and understandably dents staff motivation, often leads to a swift resignation, and is counterproductive. In reality, rather than the employee, it is the company that ends up losing in the long term: the saving is only illusory, since the “local plus” strategy creates a detrimental turnover of employees, leading to a brain drain in the company and damages its image in the eyes of potential expatriate candidates. The recruitment of self-initiated expatriates is undoubtedly an interesting way out of this impasse. Since they are already expatriates for non-professional reasons, they will more readily accept to work at local market conditions.
The question actually applies to every business: how to target and reach those with high added value individuals? One answer could be by simply taking into account their specific needs. The situation varies according to their experience as well as their countries of origin and host countries. Nevertheless, studies have shown that SIEs face a number of barriers and obstacles that limit their opportunities for integration in their host organizations and societies. Among the most commonly cited, we find the immigration policies of states, particularly regarding visas and work permits, recognition or not of qualifications and professional experience, barriers related to language proficiency and communication codes and, more insidiously, discrimination and stereotypes of all kinds. These difficulties are also exacerbated when it comes to women, who nowadays make up one out of two self-initiated expatriates. A company’s first responsibility is to recognize these obstacles and then help self-initiated expatriates to find a way round or overcome them in order to facilitate recruitment and enable them to find jobs matching their skills.
Human resource (HR) managers’ strategy plays an essential role in two specific ways: through adapting their organizational recruitment and selection procedures, on the one hand, and through providing cultural training and development opportunities to these self-initiated expatriates, on the other. In terms of recruitment, HR practices must adapt to this expatriate population, not only to avoid excluding it (for example by neglecting its preferred communication channels or requiring local professional experience that, by definition, it cannot have), but also to attract it (for example by not restricting the job offer to a technical description of the proposed job but giving in addition general information on life opportunities linked to the job). For the company, the main benefit of this proactive and differentiated approach is not to miss out on this highly skilled labor.
The second priority is to encourage them to stay with the company by facilitating their integration and cultural adaptation. Research cannot provide a comprehensive and definitive answer as to why an SIE remains in a job, especially as these reasons may vary from country to country. However, HR management should strive to understand the motivating factors in order to implement appropriate development and retention solutions.
These are only a few indicators from research results. The development of a relevant HR strategy tailored for self-initiated expatriates is essential in any case. Of course, whatever happens, it’s a win-win policy for expatriates themselves, for whom the choice of mobility is then crowned with success, but equally for companies who manage to attract the best candidates, thus giving them a decisive advantage in global competition. Indeed, the international workforce is a source of diversity, creativity and innovation. The winning companies will be those that are capable of looking beyond the various stereotypes, discrimination and obstacles, in order to tap into this worldwide flow of human resources.
This article written by Akram Al Ariss and articles on “self-initiated expatriation and migration in management literature,” co-authored with Marian Crowley-Henry (Department of Management, National University of Ireland Maynooth), published in Career Development International (2013); “Human resource management of international migrants: current theories and future research”, co-authored with Chun Guo (Department of Management, Sacred Heart University, Fairfiels, CT, USA), published in The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2015.
Further Reading (books):
In writing the two articles referenced above, Akram Al Ariss and his two co-authors conducted a systematic review of the scientific research conducted on the subject of self-initiated expatriation.