French Savoir-Faire

The IPAG Chair 'French Savoir Faire' calls for a reinvestigation of the relationship between the firms’ business development and the features of the ecosystems in which they operate.

The Chair aims at rethinking the embeddedness of economic issues in the social pattern (here understood in its widest latitude, including institutions, cultural and legal frameworks, social dynamics endogenous to the system ...). In this respect, the Chair places the diagnosis of territorial socio-economic assets and, therefore, the relationship among companies and ecosystem at the heart of its heuristics.

The 'French Savoir Faire' Chair benefits from the support (moral and financial) of the mutualist company KLESIA.

Scientifically speaking, the Chair aims to analyze the perception of the French brand in the world. And that, at a time when the French Touch is struggling to acquire a clear, distinctive, attractive and reassuring brand identity. To achieve this goal, it adopts an interdisciplinary, dynamic and comparative focus.

As a chair of research, civic awareness and societal influence, "French Savoir Faire" manages, through the tools of critical distancing, to re-examine the national narrative from a business point of view, by identifying the interplay contributing to shape an image (often fragmented and unfinished) of French know-how.

Thanks to an annual data collection campaign (by questionnaire) among a thousand foreign decision-makers and entrepreneurs, mediated by IPAG’s 3rd year expatriation students, the Chair is developing a "Barometer of the perception of French Savoir Faire” aimed at decrypting the image of the large French companies as well as the SMEs and VSEs throughout the French territory.

Created on the initiative of Dr. Guillaume Bigot, Director General of the IPAG Business School, and of Dr. Franck Dedieu (journalist, former Professor at the IPAG and current Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Marianne), the Chair is now scientifically led by Dr. Maria Giuseppina Bruna (Director of Ethics, CSR and Social Research at IPAG Business School), assisted by Dr. Abderrahman Jahmane (Assistant Professor of Management at the IPAG Business School and Methodological Advisor of the Chair).

Impact Social

• Chair of research and societal influence, "French Savoir Faire" pursues a transformational objective.
• It sees French know-how as a factor of resilience in the post-COVID French economy.
• However, to face the recession induced by the COVID-19 health crisis, it is necessary to identify new levers of international attractiveness likely to establish sustainable comparative advantages for the French economy. The ability of companies and territories to reweave, within a coherent yet agile strategy, the link between the economic, social and environmental pillars (triple bottom line approach) constitutes a lever for sustainable competitiveness. This claims for a new pact for environmental sustainability and social inclusiveness.
• Accordingly, the " French Savoir Faire Barometer 2021-2022" will include a specific section on territorial perception, paying specific attention to four macro-regions: Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France, PACA Region and Occitania.
• The Chair's ambition is to create and run a series of French Savoir Faire webinars, with its partner KLESIA, since the end of 2020, and then to create the first Club of French Savoir Faire companies

Contact

Prof. Dr. Maria Giuseppina BRUNA Directrice de la Chaire IPAG « French Savoir Faire ». Director of the IPAG Chair "French Savoir Faire". Full Professor of Management and Director of Ethics, CSR and Social Research of the IPAG Business School Group.

maria-giuseppina.bruna@ipag.fr