La prochaine séance de l’Atelier d’Économie Politique du CEPN aura lieu le mercredi 22 février, de 12h30 à 14h00.
Nous recevrons au cours de cette séance Marie Redon, Professeur, IÉSEG school of Managment, qui viendra présenter son article :
“Evolution of the Chief Financial Officers along with the financialization process in France“
Cette séance se déroulera en présentiel au Campus Condorcet, bâtiment Recherche Sud , 4e étage, salle 4.023, et sera hébergée sur la plateforme de visioconférence Avaya (accessible à partir de votre navigateur Web) via le lien suivant : https://spaces.avayacloud.com/spaces/633412070cbeec0cf130fcdb
Un résumé de la présentation est disponible ci-dessous. Cette présentation est basée sur le livre Déclin et chute du néolibéralisme, dont le deuxième chapitre est accessible au lien suivant :
https://spaces.avayacloud.com/spaces/633412070cbeec0cf130fcdb
En espérant vous y voir nombreux-ses.
L’équipe de l’Atelier d’Économie Politique.
Résumé :
“This paper investigates the agency of the CFOs on financialization. CFOs, who hold a privileged position at the boundaries of the shareholders and the organization might have ambivalent interests regarding financialization: (1) they have interest in sustaining financialization within organizations to extend their jurisdiction over other organizational professions (Fligstein, 1990; Zorn, 2004), but (2) they may also resist it to secure the stability of their position and protect the firm from excessive external pressures. Indeed Mian (2001), Mizruchi (2010) and Jung (2014) have underlined that financialization may threaten the position of executives, including financial executives, through the evolution of the succession process privileging the external hiring over the traditional internal one. Furthermore, financialization is also accused of having led to staff cuts, unjustified pay inequalities, and even jeopardizes the business development (Lazonick and O’Sullivan, 2000; Fligstein and Shin, 2004; Froud et al., 2012; Godechot, 2013). This paper aims to explain how CFOs manage such ambivalent interests and the repercussions they have on the financialization process.
We relied on a qualitative method based on personal interviews with CFOs working in large and listed firms. Thanks to privileged partnerships with two professional associations of French CFOs we conducted forty-three interviews, including fifteen interviews with Group CFOs of CAC 40 firms, two interviews with Deputy CFOs of CAC 40 firms and twenty-six interviews with Business Unit CFOs during the period 2014-2017. These data underline to what extent CFOs take part in the financialization process and the different mechanisms they rely on depending on their hierarchical position.
We contribute to the literature that has investigated the agencies of financial professionals and their impact on the financialization process (Fligstein, 1990; Zorn, 2004; Froud et al. 2006; Morales and Pezet, 2012; Cushen, 2013). We observe that to guarantee the development and sustainability of the firm, CFOs must meet the shareholders’ expectations and have turned organizational actors into agents of financialization. Thus, on one hand, CFOs financialize organizations. On the other hand, they also interact with the shareholders and thereby can hold back financialization by managing their expectations and behavior. Being the ambassador of shareholders’ interests within organizations but also the firm’s representative in the financial markets, CFOs reconcile those divergent interests to secure their position and ensure the business development. Ultimately, our study highlights that CFOs are responsible for reconciling the shareholders’ interests with the business interests, and hold an ideal position to regulate the financialization process.”
Vous pouvez retrouver les interventions précédentes sur la chaîne Youtube du CEPN en cliquant ici.