Anaïs Hamelin, director of the LaRGEresearch center, oversees the new Digitization, Organization & Territory research cluster. She took the time to answer our questions about the creation process and upcoming projects.
Can you introduce the members of the cluster? How did the team come together?
Our team includes eight colleagues from the research centers HuManiS and LaRGE :
- Anaïs Hamelin , LaRGE research center, finance - entrepreneurship
- Abel François , LaRGE research center, economics
- Maxime Merli , LaRGE research center, finance
- Jessie Pallud , HuManiS research center, information systems
- Joël Petey , LaRGE research center, finance
- Daria Plotkina, HuManiS research center, information systems - marketing
- Jean-Loup Soula , LaRGE research center, finance
- Tony Valentini , HuManiS research center, marketing
The cluster remains open to new members.
To build our team, we engaged in discussions about each other's research topics, which enabled us to add members gradually, often in groups, with each person recommending another.
What are the cluster's main research topics?
The aim of this project is to explore the consequences of digitization in the broadest sense of the term for organizations and territories. On the one hand, it will involve an interdisciplinary study of different aspects of the issue. On the other hand, the cluster will also be an opportunity to launch a collective data collection project. The aim of this original data collection is twofold: it will provide us with original data for our research, by gathering information on key issues for which no secondary data exists, and provide us with data specific to the Alsace region, enabling us to interact with key players in the local ecosystem.
- Current projects:
- Profile of users of budget management applications
- Deterritorialization of banks and access to financing for SMEs
- Access to banking facilities and services: study at local level
- New projects:
- Are budgeting apps the answer to money management?
- The "dark side" of financial applications
- Digitization of financial markets and SME financing
- Determinants and consequences of fintech adoption for SMEs
- Digital adoption and local attachment
- The "no" business model of online banking pure players
- Monetary dematerialization and budget management skills
How will the team organize itself?
Regular meetings will reinforce our cohesion and improve our collective efficiency. These meetings will encourage teamwork, enabling each member to share ideas, contribute expertise, and collaborate effectively on common projects.
What are the challenges and motivations behind this project?
Widespread digitalization is having a profound impact on organizations, generating new ways of working and increasing interdependence between systems, technologies, and individuals. The digitization of organizations has led researchers to rethink their conception of work, technology, and organization, while developing new theoretical frameworks and analytical concepts to better understand the impact of digitization on work and organizations. However, current research focuses primarily on the organization and opportunities that emerge as a result of digitalization. For the time being, the question of interactions between organization and territory—as a result of digitalization—has not been addressed, except from a very macroeconomic point of view, by observing the link between digitalization and the macroeconomic dynamism of economies. The aim of this cluster is to develop innovative, multi-disciplinary research into the interactions between digitalization, territorialization, and territorial dynamics. This multi-level approach enables links to be forged between the organizational level and the meso/macro level of the territory or ecosystem. It is thus in line with new trends in microfoundation.
What are the cluster's medium- and long-term objectives?
The aim of this cluster is to unite the School's researchers working on the issue of digitalization. This project is directly in line with the School's area of expertise in the management of digital transformation in organizations. We discovered that a number of colleagues were working in isolation on this theme and also had strong links with other national and international research teams. By bringing together researchers from several disciplines on this subject, we aim to develop new research perspectives. This will be achieved through several channels: (1) complementary theoretical approaches, (2) a global vision of the challenges of digitalization in organizations, and (3) the import/discovery of new methodologies. Ultimately, this grouping of researchers should enable us to develop an original, innovative, and global approach to the issue. These collaborations and the research dynamic should lead to original contributions and publications in national and international journals.
What's more, our project is highly likely to be of interest to the socio-economic world. More specifically, we want to use this cluster to initiate data collection at the local level (Alsace) in order to enlighten socio-economic players and the local ecosystem on the digitization of the financial sector as an opportunity for Alsatian organizations and territory. In the long term, this locally-anchored data collection could lead to the creation of an observatory, or even a corporate chair, on digitization and the dynamism of the Alsace ecosystem.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions!