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Organizational resilience, defined by a firm’s speed in reaching a dynamic equilibrium after a shock and after the shocks are absorbed, and crisis management are critical in a global crisis. The concept of resilience is increasingly used in the economic press; nevertheless, few studies demonstrate empirically how firms became resilient and the lessons to be learned from it. Traditionally, the concept of resilience is approached as resistance in the face of a crisis. The authors go further by showing three-loop learning, which is part of a logic of innovation and regeneration. This study aims to examine how a business can regenerate itself by effectively managing the external threats and disruptions caused by a crisis. Also, this study deepens knowledge on learning process. The double-loop learning process is known in the literature as enabling firms to learn from unexpected events and react accordingly. The findings point out a third loop implying the co-invention of a new business model and a collective mindfulness of changes made.

Using longitudinal data, the authors investigate how the global crisis affects merger negotiations between two companies. This study analyzes the period of dialogue (negotiation) between the two entities with a view to carrying out a merger and then their withdrawal from the project during the pandemic, reshuffling the cards for each company. The negotiation period is not normally disclosed because of its highly confidential and strategic nature and it is therefore difficult for researchers to access merger operations at the negotiation stage. From this viewpoint, this case study was chosen because of the availability of generally inaccessible documentation.

This in-depth case study provides new insights on organizational resilience and the recovery capacity of a firm. The results underline four main triggers that a firm should develop in facing a major crisis: skills; credits; previous and historical relationships; and corporate culture. Recovery capacity depends on reactivity, flexibility, learning and regeneration. Finally, this study points out a three-loop learning experience that can be understood as a learning process in two steps to generate lasting and adaptive changes.

The limitations are those concerning a single case study.

This study highlights the ability to deal with unexpected events. First, this work identifies concrete items that can be perceived by managers as elements enabling a firm to develop resilience. Second, the results show main elements enabling this capacity as reactivity – both companies react quickly and effectively to disturbances to limit the impact on their performance; or flexibility – firms adapt their business model to deal with disruptions. Third, this work underlines a learning capacity process in three steps to recover capacity. This process stimulates creativity and innovation by the teams and stakeholders by placing them at the heart of the change.

This case provides a vivid illustration of firms’ adaptation to a rapidly evolving context because of a global crisis. Theoretical concepts and empirical findings from the literature are combined to present a single consistent picture.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the major difficulties and challenges encountered during the crucial process of family succession. In this study, the authors list and analyze issues encountered by managers or by the CEO of a family business.

Using a single longitudinal real-time case study conducted over a period of 10 years in a French family business, this study identifies the challenges encountered during family succession. The authors were allowed to follow, over a long period, the planning of the CEO’s succession.

The authors identified six critical points in the succession process: planning succession development; favoring creation of financial value for the shareholders; investment policy, risk taking and time horizon of investments (growth); family employment policy (family private benefit); opening of capital and debt policy (external financing); and financing of capital reduction policy (external financing).

The paper highlights the difficulties, issues and questions encountered by an SME manager or by the CEO of a family business. The analysis gives insights into the deep nature of the family structure, by involving the notions of culture and organizations serving the performance of family businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to study how networks may influence the awarding of a contract. In particular, the authors explore strategic networks originating from cooperative relationships.

Based on notices of contracts awarded in the French public sector, the authors identified 10,377 partnership relations within 4,242 strategic alliances. The authors represented the system of relations in a graph. The authors used the networks depicted to measure a set of relational properties and build a structural equation model (partial least squared-path modeling).

The results highlight two important elements. First, the authors reveal the impact of the strength of weak and strong ties on contract awarding. Second, the authors show that the strength of weak ties is magnified by lead partners.

The findings provide insight into strategic behavior that can influence awarding contract. The authors also provide public principals with new means to improve their partner relations.

The objective of the study is to explore legitimation dynamics in a public–private integration process and to gain insights on the specific role of CSR in triggering public–private logics.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is part of firms' strategy in gaining legitimacy from their stakeholders in a merger context. However, little is known about the role of CSR in triggering diverse dynamics from public or private logics during post-merger integration. This study aims at exploring the specific role of CSR in triggering such diverse logics. A qualitative research design based on a single case study of a public–private merger of two French listed companies in the urban planning sector was opted for. The analysis was pursued in real time from the signing of the agreement and then over two years.

The results show that public–private legitimation is a process that proceeds in stages. The authors emphasize the key factors that characterize it: align on external concerns: reflecting societal and institutional pressures (public legitimation); readapt to make sense internally in relation to the merger through managerial innovation (private legitimation) and CSR as a form of corporate self-storying: combining the social and societal aspects of CSR within the organization (hybrid legitimation). Three major actions were identified in activating a CSR legitimation strategy: identifying and responding to local needs; building a unified brand, culture, and employee commitment to the organization; and creating sustainable programs.

The first major contribution is linked to triggers influencing legitimation dynamics and in particular the role of CSR operating as a legitimation strategy in the merger integration process. A second theoretical contribution is linked to the evolutionary nature of the post-merger integration process. The processual study shows how stakeholder legitimacy demands can escalate and change over time.

First, three major actions were identified as key steps in activating a CSR legitimation strategy (identifying and responding to local needs; building a unified brand, culture, and employee commitment to the organization; and creating sustainable programs). These missions can be understood as key steps for managers in implementing CSR within an organization in a post-merger integration context. Second, this study increases our comprehension of legitimation as a dynamic micro-process. The different stages described in the study can be considered by the managers involved in the merger process as learning experiences to understand the complex phenomenon that is the integration process.

This study enriches the legitimacy-as-process perspective in providing insights on the specific role of CSR in triggering public–private logics.

Intergroup dynamics between the acquirer and the acquired are determinants of post-merger integration success. Mergers and acquisitions scholars call for the adoption of new reading prisms to gain deeper insights on post-merger integration dynamics as the failure rate of mergers remains high. In mobilizing works from social psychology to examine intergroup dynamics, this study aims to respond to this call by shedding light on the post-merger integration process. Typologies of integration processes do not take into account intergroup dynamics that operate within the new entity, which are influencing the decision-making process. To better understand how firms achieve a successful integration (symbiosis), the authors propose a processual analysis of intergroup dynamics in post-merger integration.

The research approach is a qualitative, longitudinal enquiry, which allows us to examine intergroup dynamics in two real-time merger case studies. The integration processes selected for this research include symbiotic integrations. Both integration processes were analyzed over two years, starting with the merger agreement.

This study sheds additional light on the triggers for achieving symbiosis integration by demonstrating the specific role and contribution of each of the parties (majority and minority) during the process. This study shows that post-merger is a process that follows different steps to reach symbiosis, involving majority/minority dynamics. The symbiosis implies minority innovation by adopting new business and organizational practices, mainly inspired by the standards and values of the minority. The study highlights innovation by the minority as a key element in achieving a symbiotic integration. This element can be understood by managers involved in managing the integration as a turning point in the integration process.

The authors investigated symbiotic integration in specific industries; questions can arise about the extent to which findings are transferable to other mergers and acquisitions contexts.

This study advances the understanding of the dynamics between the majority and minority in adopting a processual and longitudinal analysis. On that point, this study gains insights on the “black box” that represents post-merger integration process.

This article aims to explore how and why the creation of technological innovation during a merger can end in failure. The objective is to propose new analytical elements to improve the formulation and execution of the integration process between an SME (small and medium enterprise) and a large enterprise.

The authors develop a theoretical framework based on the main research results from several fields, including technology transfer, innovation dissemination, and management. This case study then focuses on a merger in the IT sector in real time.

This study allowed the authors to test theoretical elements, especially the choice of the integration method, which may favour the creation of technological innovation during the integration period. The authors present new reasons for the failure of co‐created innovation between an SME and a large enterprise in the IT sector. This case study allowed them to test theoretical elements such as the choice of an integration method which could favour the creation of technological innovation during the integration period while enriching scientific knowledge by proposing a dynamic approach to the integration process.

Before managers can envisage symbiosis between two merging firms, they first need to go through a period of exploration, which may entail costly mistakes. Yet this exploration period may be necessary to enable them to discover the limitations of a strictly rational approach to the integration process and to broaden their normal frame of reference. For this in‐depth study, the authors benefited from free access to a substantial amount of information that is generally unavailable for scientific research, which greatly contributed to their work. The authors' theoretical framework is not exhaustive, but they tried to incorporate the most significant research results.

Strategic alliances have a low success rate despite the profusion of literature on this topic in the last 20 years. To understand the factors that determine performance of partnership relations, the purpose of this paper is to study the roles of control and the strength of interorganizational ties in businesses ability to manage strategic alliances.

The authors have examined 10,377 partnership relations formed as part of strategic alliances to analyze the capacity of a business to manage its alliances. The authors built a structural equations model (PLS) based on observation of 4,242 alliances.

This research identifies two determinants of the success of alliance management. First, the impact of weak ties and strong ties is identical when the business does not control the alliance. Second, weak ties are a more effective means than strong ties when a business controls the alliance.

The main contribution of this study thus lies in our analysis of interorganizational relations and of their tangible impact on strategic trade-offs. The field of public procurement is particularly well-suited to evaluating this phenomenon, given the subtlety of alliances at play.

This paper aims to answer two questions: firstly, how does the mode of corporate governance evolve following a merger between two specific companies looking for a joint innovation policy? Secondly, what are the factors that guide decision makers towards choosing one governance model over another?

In order to answer these questions, this study focuses on two unlisted SMEs within the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, where joint innovation plays a key role. The authors studied the corporate governance decisions made during a strategic alliance between a small enterprise (called eStat) and a medium‐sized enterprise (called Médiamétrie), formed with a view to building a strategic partnership based on technological innovation. The method chosen to carry out this research involved a single case study based on passive observation (153 days of observation), participant observation, the conducting of 70 semi‐structured interviews and the analysis of internal documents such as the memorandum of understanding.

From a critical reading of the “standard” (disciplinary/shareholder, relating to process profitability issues in particular) and the “strategic” (the importance of human capital, relating to innovation issues in particular) approaches, the authors demonstrate how the managers of the newly‐created company (Médiamétrie‐eStat) gradually opted for a renewed, resource‐based corporate governance model.

Contrary to what underlies existing literature addressing corporate governance, this paper shows the need to consider the dynamics involved in the adoption of the corporate governance model when a merger deals with strategic innovation issues.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the sound practical reasons underlying the behaviour of very small enterprise (VSE) owner‐managers with respect to their perceived resistance to the dominant entrepreneurial and managerial models in areas such as management methods, marketing or internationalisation.

The current literature on VSE managers was reviewed in the light of Raymond Boudon's general theory of rationality. Starting from the premise that in science, the simplest explanation tends to be the best, the paper highlights the practical reasons why VSE owner‐managers behave the way they do.

While there may be cultural or personality‐based reasons why VSE owner‐managers often appear to reject the traditional entrepreneurial model, these are not the sole or even the main explanation. In most cases, the behaviour in question can be explained much more simply by practical, down‐to‐earth reasons. From the actor's point of view, his behaviour is always rational.

This new model of the behaviour of VSE owner‐managers has not been empirically tested.

The paper presents a novel vision of the behaviour of VSE owner‐managers, based on the practical reasons underlying their actions, that goes beyond the existing typologies such as the “Traditional‐vs‐Opportunistic” entrepreneur.

The purpose of this research paper is to show to what extent psychological, cultural and behavioural factors can influence on the succession process in the particular case of family‐run businesses?

Data on 12 directors of family‐run SME were grouped together on the basis of questions derived from the research question. To do this, the authors operated using a principle guided by cross referencing responses, that is, finding the incidence of elements that make it possible to justify substantively the existence of the category and the common existence of these elements within the cases studied.

The thematic analysis performed made it possible to highlight five main motives for cultural and psychological resistance in former directors: the loss of power and influence, the risk of deconstruction, the loss of professional and social legitimacy, the loss of references and meaning, and the refusal of old age and death.

The results show that transferors search for connections in the aim of identifying common points of anchor, affinities on to which they can project themselves as an element of continuity or an extension of their personality. The paper can in particular note the importance given to cultural proximity and to previous professional relations with the transferor. These criteria, unlike personal factors, are of the interpersonal type and thus deeply imprinted on the transferor's most intimate desires and motivations, including the main desire, which is to search for all that can make possible an extension of himself within his company and thus ensure the permanence of his values and his time at the organisation.