Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2005

News

Conducting an affaire – French and Australians have different methods

IN FRANCE everybody handles a modest affaire the same way, while in Australia, everybody does it differently.

This is an early result of a collaborative research project underway between La Trobe University and the University of Burgundy at Dijon in France.

It is not as it first appears. The research was on how small and medium French affaires – affaire being the French word for a business enterprise – initiate innovation in their businesses compared to similar businesses in Australia.

‘To everybody’s surprise we found the way small and medium sized owner-managed manufacturing businesses in Victoria and in France initiate innovation was totally different,’ says Dr Vijaya Thyil, a lecturer in La Trobe’s Graduate School of Management.

With the Head of the Graduate School of Management, Professor Geoffrey Durden, and Professors Marcel Truche and Sophie Reboud of the University of Burgundy’s School of Business, they interviewed the heads of 23 small and medium sized manufacturing businesses in Victoria and 29 similar businesses in France.

The in-depth interviews on the sources of business innovation revealed a stark contrast. In Australia, almost everybody in a business, even customers and other outsiders, made substantial contributions to the ideas that advanced the business, new products, promotion, sales and overall commercial strategy. The head of the businesses listened readily to workers, customers, suppliers and others.

‘Everybody from the office receptionist to the people on the work floor contributed ideas,’ Dr Thyil said. In France it was quite different. All innovative ideas stemmed directly from management, and mostly from the head of the enterprise. Very little came from people down the management chain.

The research also unearthed the probable reason for this. In Australia the vast majority of founders and owners of small and medium sized manufacturing businesses were immigrants, and thus had a diversity of work cultures and approaches to business. The one thing they had in common was that all were prepared to tap staff, customers and others for ideas to enhance their business.

In France it was the opposite. In almost every case, small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises were run by native born French people and all had the same business culture. In the main, the only people contributing ideas about business innovation were the owner-managers themselves.

The researchers defined a small business in Australia as one with a workforce of less than 20. A medium business had between 20 and 199 workers. In France, because definitions are different, a small business had less than 50 workers and a medium business between 50 and 250.

‘One of the great challenges facing small and medium businesses which want to grow is how to engender an entrepreneurial spirit which leads to innovation, and how to keep that spirit alive,’ Dr Thyil said.

These different sources of innovation became apparent in the early stages of the data analysis which is currently being completed.

The joint research project was initiated when Professor Durden visited the University of Burgundy in 2003 to arrange student exchanges. He discovered that the University’s School of Business had similar research interests in small and medium sized business.

Late this year, La Trobe Graduate School of Management students spent three weeks in Dijon studying Business and Management in Europe, a unit in their MBA program.