When Research comes alive

Bringing together academics and professionals and enabling them to challenge their views 
                                                                                     

In a context of rapid change, the Chair has the main objective to better understand how the transformation of work as a whole leads to organisational changes.
Headed by Professor Emmanuelle Léon, in partnership with ESCP business school, BivwAk! - the BNP Paribas Transversal Hub of Transformation - BNP Paribas Wealth Management, BNP Paribas Personal Finance and BNP Paribas International Retail Banking.

During the last three years, a strong dynamic has been engaged:
- 12 international research projects were launched around 4 key topics: Flexibility at work, New work relationships, Roles & competencies at work, Virtual organisations & teams, involving an international team of 26 researchers worldwide
- 19 academic articles, 3 white papers and 84 media articles have been published so far
 

On July 5th, BivwAK!  invited the HR BNP Paribas community to share the key insights on the projects.

 
Marie Guillaume, Head of BivwAk! Set up - Transformation Hub chez BNP Paribas, and Vincent Lecomte, CEO chez BNP Paribas Wealth Management, opened the session :“it is a great opportunity to discuss the impacts for our organisation and start exploring some areas of concerns for the next cycle of work of the Chair”.

A jam-packed programme has been built for about 80 attendees:

Key insights from 3 research projects

Organisation in virtual teams

Virtual teams have been an area of cross-disciplinary importance for over two decades. Despite the richness of the virtual team literature, important research gaps still exist. In particular, how virtual team work impacts well-being is under-explored, which is key when virtual work becomes prevalent. Using the job demands-resources (JDR) framework, Researchers examined the specific demands that are presented when working in both newly formed and established virtual teams, and the resources that people need to mitigate these demands, in order to work well and effectively.
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Reshaping the work experience

This project has been designed with VPHR from different business lines in July 2020 and launched within BNP Paribas in September 2020, in order to fully understand the challenges of remote & hybrid work.
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The role of agility to organise and change work practices

Digital transformation is usually driven from the top-down by IT systems which enforce new work practices. It is hoped that these systems can align the business operations with the strategic goals of an organisation.. In contrast, Researchers are interested in Bivwak’s way to induce digital transformation at BNP Paribas because it does not follow a typical process that relies on IT systems. In particular, what they see is an attempt to create polycentric digital transformation, to prepare the organisation for digitalisation. There are many potential advantages to such polycentric transformation (e.g., scaling, local adaptation, costs) and issues (conflicts with procedural thinking, management control, meaning of work).
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A "market place" session

Participants were then invited to  meet and discuss with all research team members on all the projects during a “market place” session. An interesting and dynamic way to  bring Research to live and to show how a Chair can build bridges between research and companies’ challenges.
“Providing BNP Paribas with a high-level research helps the company to foster the transformation and to think about the consequences of this transformation. Creativity and innovation were at the heart of the process”, says Professor Emmanuelle Léon, Scientific Director of the Chair.

Lessons from a student's master thesis

Catalina Schweitzer, ESCP student presented her Master Thesis “How did the global pandemic shape leadership behaviour and what are the implications for effective leadership in the New Now?”. "I feel honoured to have been awarded with the best Master Thesis prize on my work and to have the opportunity to join the conference and present my work. It has been a great pleasure to be able to meet other researchers in this field, participate in workshops and set the path for new research ideas relating to the transformation of work in the context of accelerated change."

Workshops and keynote

Before attending a keynote by Professor Emmanuelle Léon, participants were split into 3 workshops (company & work engagement, digital workspace, social capital & people development) to explore challenges and opportunities, but also to sort out topics the Research could address in the coming months.

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