The French Argument

Gilles Pélisson, Chairman with a broad view

BY THE TIME HE STEPPED DOWN AS CEO OF THE ACCOR GROUP IN 2011, GILLES PÉLISSON HAD ACQUIRED ABOUT AS RICH AN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS EDUCATION AS ONE PERSON COULD GET. With degrees from ESSEC and the Harvard Business School, he had served as marketing and managing director of restaurant chains in the U.S. and France, overseen Accor’s Asian-Pacific hotel business, and served as the CEO of Euro Disney and Bouygues Telecom. His definition of corporate social responsibility came to include respect for local cultures, and it grew from the messiness of having worked in the real world.

“The more upscale you go in the hotel industry,” he says, for example,  “the more standardized your product. A Four Seasons is always a Four Seasons, anywhere in the world. I ran Sofitel, in New York, and we were just as good in Paris and Singapore and elsewhere, because that’s what travelers expected. But the more you go into economy products, the more domestic you want to be. Your clientele is less international, and you have to respect the habits, the food, the way local people use their beds, their showers. You have to adapt. It can be adapting your physical product. It can be the way you interact with customers. But it’s also the way you do business.”

Pélisson oversaw hotels operating in countries where bribery was an accepted part of doing business. “How do you recognize and reward a manager who is in charge of your business where baksheesh is part of daily life,” Pélisson wondered, “ compared to France or the U.S. where that’s something you just don’t want to hear about and can’t explain?”

His approach included frank, open discussion. It was the only way, he felt, that he could create guidelines for operating without crossing a blurry ethical border. “You want people to feel empowered and know that yes, they belong to an international company with high standards, yet allow them to adapt to the local culture without offending it, and still be able to do business.” He had his managers in Africa and Brazil become involved in the fights against AIDS and malaria. They were trained not only to educate customers and employees, but also to talk with their families. The responsibility went beyond the business. “In some places,” Pélisson says, “we helped fight against sexual tourism. We had to learn how to put the employees at ease, to talk about and address these things. It was more than simply being a good hotelier. It had to do with making a commitment to the community.” 

At Essec, professor Hamid Bouchikhi, co-author of The Soul of the Corporation, has seen that kind of social responsibility become more common in the teaching in the classroom — especially in courses on social entrepreneurship. “It’s been growing quite fast, as a separate stream,” he says, “in this and other schools. It’s good news. On the other hand, when I think about this from a longer-term perspective, I think it would be a pity if as a society we came to think there are two types of entrepreneurship; that there is the mainstream, heartless, entrepreneurship that is only about creating value and wealth. And on the other hand there is the “feel good” entrepreneurship, or social entrepreneurship, whose main purpose would be to primarily provide social value. We need to reconcile once and for all the fact that business has an economic component and must have a social component at the same time. We cannot just go on separating them.”

He sees ESSEC’s increasing role in international education as an opportunity. “The French like to argue,” he explains. “We like to discuss. Call it intellectual intercourse. The other thing the French value is complexity. The French mindset is wired to always look for complexity. If something is too simple, then it’s probably not worth it. If you think of complexity as an opportunity to understand issues from different angles,” he says, and he could be talking about the many issues involved with an overlapping, expanding, ever more interconnected world, “then different voices will help make better, more informed choices. That’s what the French bring to the table.”

Essec Business School is an institute that provides management degrees and a professional experience to its students. Their academic programs foster values that is essential for a promising career in the corporate world. Another interesting aspect about this institute is that students get opportunities to mingle with students of diverse backgrounds and nationalities. This business school has truly become a global village.

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http://councilonbusinessandsociety.com/perspectives/thematic/the-french-argument