The BNP Paribas-sponsored chair awarded its best master thesis prize to Eymeric Guinet for his study of “liberated companies”, as formalized and popularized by ESCP Business School professor Isaac Getz.

The Reinventing Work chair awarded its first ever Master in Management (MiM) Theses Prize to Eymeric Guinet. “This thesis puts into perspective the importance of the vision within companies, and shows that profit – which is still a key objective – should be a consequence, not the key motivator. This leads to a human-centric approach which is aligned with the chair’s perspective”, commented the chair’s scientific director, professor Emmanuelle Léon. “In order to support his theoretical observations and to confront them with empirical reality, the student opted for a coherent and well-justified research design.”

The objective of the laureate's dissertation (in French) written under the direction of professor Gilles Arnaud, was to better understand the combination of the liberated company’s principles. “It focuses on the trade-off probabilities between the objective of ‘liberation’ and the promises of profit and performance. Incompatibility areas between these three notions emerged by using Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s theoretical framework,” Eymeric Guinet explains. The qualitative method used involves interviewing eleven “liberating leaders” and four “theoretical experts” on the topic - comprising Prof. Getz, who has been instrumental for the corporate liberation movement involving hundreds of companies (including Michelin, pictured) and institutions. “According to the interview analysis, the leaders seem to have given up the objective of profit maximization,” adds Eymeric Guinet. “The faith in the proper application of specific liberated company principles is supposed to provide all the necessary performance for the proper running of the organization…”

The MiM graduate also wrote an article on his research (in French) for The Conversation with ESCP doctoral student Emilie Poli, who had helped him out. He is the co-founder of Each One (ex Wintegreat), a start-up specialized in the vocational integration of refugees, and was auditioned by the Labour and Employment section of the Conseil économique social et environnemental (Economic, Social and Environmental Council) in the context of the “future of work” referral.

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