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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).

The purpose of this paper is to show that steering overall performance requires not only juxtaposing indicators focused on economic, social and environmental performance but also negotiating the measurement of performance metrics with all the stakeholders.

This is an action-research and intervention-research project aimed at experimenting an integrated and negotiated management control system for overall performance. The choice for the case study is a hospital in the Middle East that practices green management and that has to be self-financed while accepting all patients, even those who cannot pay.

The integration of the three dimensions of overall performance requires involving all stakeholders in the implementation of innovative management control.

The case is a pilot experiment and shows the conditions for an appropriate design of an overall performance management control methodology. However, further experiments should be carried out to shed light on the factors that form invariants regarding integrated performance log-books.

The study design is that of a management control methodology that enables the short- and long-run economic impacts of social and environmental performance.

The action-research process has proved to be a learning experience for the hospital and both internal and external stakeholders. However, replicability remains to be proven through experimenting the method in various settings.

This paper shows the need for negotiation of overall performance with all stakeholders to design and implement an appropriate participative approach to management control.

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 present a framework and a case that delineates the coordinated use of the socio-economic approach to management (SEAM) and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) to facilitate operational change.

This study uses action research and thematic analysis to explore the augmentation of existing process improvement and organizational assessment methodologies in a production environment.

Organizations are under increasing pressure to improve all aspects of business. Project leaders and consultants often follow popular quantitatively oriented protocols like LSS to evaluate explicit operational processes. Including a qualitatively oriented protocol like SEAM expands the project leader’s capability through greater consideration of implicit organizational issues. This paper presents a case where LSS was complemented by SEAM to assess a process that was entangled with several latent organizational dysfunctions.

SEAM and LSS are accepted protocols to facilitate process improvement and organizational change. Pairing the two protocols into a SEAM-LSS model offers the strengths of each approach, while compensating for the limitations of each. The result is a more inclusive change protocol that reduces potential oversights and inefficiencies that could occur if project leaders worked within the purview of only one methodology.

This paper uses action research to propose a model to bring qualitative and quantitative methodologies together into a larger complementary framework to use when evaluating organizational problems and opportunities. This paper aims to stimulate discussion and research that would lead to more robust process improvement protocols.

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.

This article brings out the numerous connections that can be established between the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) considered as an architecture and the postmodern movement. The authors analyze the contribution of SEAM to the postmodern management approach, through the process of the construction and reconstruction of managerial discourses within the framework of socio‐economic interventions. They tackle the controversial issue of pessimism vs optimism in postmodern approach to conclude that SEAM is a tool and a method, which makes it possible to better control order and chaos so as to create positive change.

The socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) model has been experimented in over 1,000 companies and organizations in 30 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. The key success factors for the dissemination of SEAM are both individual and institutional. They rely on the diversity of actors, trans‐generation, and a variety of networks. At this stage, the dissemination process of SEAM brings to light unexpected synergies. This process is based on methodological principles such as generic contingency and cognitive interactivity.

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.

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.