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In this chapter we develop sustainability implications of the Savall, Zardet, Bonett, and colleagues’ approach, known worldwide as socioeconomic approach to management (SEAM). SEAM can be used as a way of doing management and organizational inquiry into the ecological sustainability of practices with planetary boundaries. We conclude that a socially responsible approach to management needs to consider the hidden costs to an enterprise if it is not being sustainable to planetary resource limits.

This paper aims to present a concise history of the main action research (AR) contribution in France. The authors discuss the role of AR in the organizational research field in general and compare it with intervention research (IR) and presented Institute of Socio-Economy of Enterprises and Organizations’s specific contributions and its presence on the international stage through review publications and wider works.

A narrative approach was used to analyze this history.

AR is considered as a research family. The authors define and compare AR with other qualitative methods. They analyze AR and IR principles, which include interaction with practitioners, negotiation with them, focusing in the third part on the case of ISEOR research team.

AR and IR permit to bridge the gap between researchers and practitioners, to develop useful research. At the same time, they permit to develop new researchers' competencies and to fund research, in a context of reduced public research funds.

This article permits to understand the reality of what is and how to develop an IR, and the difficulties for researchers to insert them in the academic community, although France seems to be more permissive than others’ contexts. It permits also to better know the French IR and AR research in management.

This chapter presents a case study involving a socio-economic Organizational Development (OD) project carried out in a European subsidiary of a large multinational corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This research case study, one of the 1,854 socio-economic interventions undertaken by the ISEOR research center, was chosen for its good illustration of the OD engineering process. It connects the dots between OD and financial performance, between immediate results and the creation of potential. We look at some of the tools and methods, such as overhauling loss and profit accounts and balance sheets with an eye on socio-economic balance, to illustrate socioeconomic tools at work and how they help enhance compatibility between the objectives of all stakeholders, including shareholders. With this case study, we also set out to provide food for thought on the contribution of socio-economic OD to the construction of socially responsible capitalism (Savall et al., 2015).

This chapter addresses the “Taylorism–Fayolism–Weberism (TFW) virus,” a metaphor developed to highlight how organizational features recommended by each of these three management theorists produce dysfunctions that create unintended hidden costs that adversely impact organizations and their employees. The virus leads to an ideology where cost cutting is seen as the best means to improve an organization’s performance. We explore the problematic features of the TFW virus: hyperspecialization, separation of work design from work execution, and depersonalized job descriptions designed for workers who are falsely assumed to be lazy. We then address how these organizational features are related to micro dysfunctions and hidden costs (e.g., poor work organization) that accumulate into macro-level dysfunctions and costs that form the features of the risk society envisioned by Ullrich Beck (1992). These dysfunctions collectively threaten human and planetary existence. Next, we describe how the socioeconomic approach to management (SEAM) can address the TFW virus in ways that manage and remediate micro, macro, and planetary risks that emerge from a globalized enterprise. We conclude by offering a hopeful agenda for research on how to use SEAM to more effectively manage the emerging micro and macro dysfunctions and impacts of the world risk society.

The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) with 15 large system change methods. All 16 of these methods are part of the transorganizational development (TD) gameboard (see the Web site at http://web.nmsu.edu/ dboje/TDgameboard.html). Based on this comparison, the paper suggests that SEAM is broader‐based, more integrative, and more postmodern (more multi‐vocal and power‐conscious) than most other TD methodologies.

For more than a century companies’ organizational variables have been studied and researched. Historically, the practice is to focus on the precursors in the management sciences field, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol and Max Weber, the founders of the classical organization theory school. The objective of this article is to determine if the fundamental principles of this school are still present and an integral part of industrial companies today, and if so, to assess their impact. The paper demonstrates how the socio‐economic approach, which was created in 1973, goes well beyond the socio‐technical and organizational‐development approaches to change management, by taking into better account the economic and strategic dimensions of leadership management.

The purpose of this article is to explore the similarities and differences in the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) method and postmodern approaches to theatre. Neither metaphorical nor managerialist, SEAM's perspective allows that the organization is theatre. Introduces the terms “metascript” and “metatheatre” to describe how SEAM's approach accomodates the multiple perspectives and simultaneous multiple stages populated by the “spect‐actors” (Boal, A., Theatre of the Oppressed, translated by Charles A. and Maria‐Odillia Leal McBride, Theatre Communications Group, New York, NY, 1979, originally published in Spanish as Teatro de Oprimido, Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires, 1974) of the Tamara‐esque postmodern organization theatre.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issues raised by hidden conflicts in a charismatic-led organization. The paper investigates the transformation from a management paradigm of quelling conflict artificially through charismatic leadership to a paradigm of negotiation that favors participation, systematicity, the multiplying of innovation sources and synchronization. The research is based on a specific approach to action research aimed at revealing the inherently masked conflictive energy, and contributing to a more sustainable, peaceful and well-performing construct.

The framework is a specific approach to participatory action research that the authors call socio-economic intervention research.

The results of the research support the proposition that while charismatic leadership quells conflict and jeopardizes the sustainability of the organization, socio-economic intervention research can help transform conflicts into cooperation in this type of organization.

The main contributions relate to shedding light on the hazards of denying conflict in charismatic-led organizations, and the importance of systemic negotiation in transforming conflict into cooperation in the Middle Eastern cultural context.

This article presents the socio‐economic model founded and developed by the author since 1973. It focuses on the fundamental hypothesis of the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) and demonstrates how the model is a system‐ wide approach to change management.

The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of an integrative approach to CSR.

The paper is based on the qualimetrics intervention-research methodology. It is an exploratory research project.

The intervention-research case study shows an example where an integrative approach to CSR was made possible.

The paper only presents an example of a company. Future research should show how the method that has been experimented to integrate CSR might be implemented.

The paper might help company actors debate and propose an innovative approach to CSR.

The paper provides scientific methods to better negotiate the creation of norms and standards in the field of CSR, enabling to move one step further as regards ISO 26000.

It shows some of the conditions required to bridge the gap between CSR and financial standards.