The Chairs

Supported by

 

Titular Professor

Sybille Mertens, Social Enterprise and business ethics, Professor

Field

Social Enterprise & Business Ethics

Presentation

Attuned to sustainable development issues and more than ever aware of the crucial role that the private sector must play in the transformation of our societies, a valuable partner of the HEC network - a historical actor of family entrepreneurship in the Liège region - has agreed to support research on SMEs’ extra-financial performance. in Belgium, SMEs represent more than 99% of companies.

As of October 2021, this new partnership will materialize through the creation of the Eugénie Piedboeuf Chair and will make possible the financing from 2021 to 2025 of the PhD thesis of Simon Meert (a former student and current researcher at HEC Liège). His thesis will be supervised by Professor Sybille Mertens, Director of the Centre d'Economie Sociale, in charge also of HEC’s Master's in Management of Social and Sustainable Enterprises.

Beyond the publication of scientific articles and spin-offs in HEC Liège’s course programs, a first concrete deliverable of this doctoral research program is the development of a sustainability management tool for SMEs built around the framework offered by the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

This is a crucial and promising project. Indeed, in the current global context, assessing SMEs’ extra-financial performance linked to their management choices has become essential, both to strengthen them and to enhance their positive impacts. By doing so, SMEs can improve their attractiveness to various stakeholders, not only their customers but also their potential financiers and the talents they could attract. On the sponsors' side, impact investing funds (e.g. KOIS invest, SI2, Change, Scale Up), sustainable crowdfunding intermediaries (e.g. EccoNova, Lita.co) or public investors (e.g. SRIW, Noshaq) recognize great difficulty in easily delimiting a sustainable investment universe despite their preference for investing in it. In terms of human resources, it is becoming increasingly clear that companies’ values and sustainable management practices are an attractive factor for workers, particularly highly-educated ones. Consequently, in response to the need for monitoring (internal perspective) and reporting (external perspective), companies must broaden the analysis and management of their performance to include non-financial aspects.

The creation of the Eugénie Piedboeuf Chair on issues related to SMEs’ extra-financial performance, therefore, marks a strong and necessary commitment both for our society and for the companies themselves. We can only hope that this project will boost Belgian SMEs’ commitment to (even) more sustainability!

Supported by

 

Titular

Sybille Mertens, Social Enterprise and business ethics, Professor

Field

Social Enterprise & Business Ethics

Presentation

Basic and applied research on themes related to the social economy and its ecosystem:

• Business models of social enterprises
• New financing methods for social enterprises
• Social impact assessment
• Social innovation
• Short circuits
• Citizen economy
• Socio-professional integration
• ESG criteria and social economy
• Employee participation

Supported by

 

Titular

Julien Hambuckers, Associate Professor of Finance

Field

Financial Management for the future

Presentation

The objective of the Chair is to contribute to quality research in the field of 'Non-financial risk intelligence' and to develop an expertise in this field at HEC Liège.

A research program whose ambition is to develop a better understanding and exploitation of non-standard data (such as textual data) to improve the understanding and measurement of non-financial risks (such as reputational and fraud risks).

Supported by

Titular

Axel Gautier, Ph.D. in Economics, Professor of Industrial Organization

Field

Economic Analysis & Policy

Presentation

The objective of the Chair is to stimulate research in economics in the field of distribution networks. The research carried out in this framework will focus on two complementary areas: network pricing and consumer behavior.

On the pricing aspect, it is important to rethink the latter by taking into account new uses, new technologies, new behaviors while remaining within a general framework of regulated tariffs. The objective of the research will be to think about new tariff structures that are incentive-based for consumers, so as to align their behavior with the imperatives of the energy transition, and fair, so as to guarantee the broadest possible participation in the transition process. Finally, tariffs must guarantee the financing of networks and incentives for investment and innovation. The objective of the research is to propose innovative tariff structures that promote the energy transition and respect the conditions stated above.

The implementation of incentive tariffs for consumers is only interesting if consumers correctly interpret the signals sent to them. The analysis and understanding of consumer behavior, in particular their consumption and investment decisions, and their participation in an energy exchange mechanism, are complementary to the analysis of tariffs. The possible behavioral biases that could be identified in consumers must be taken into account in the tariff analysis. The two dimensions of the analysis are therefore complementary. Behavioral analysis can be done in several ways, either by using data on household consumption or investment, or by means of surveys to be carried out among a portion of the population.

Supported by

Etopia & Terro Fund

Titular

Sybille Mertens, Professor, Social Enterprise and Business Ethics

Martin François, PhD Student

Kevin Maréchal, Lecturer - Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech

Field

Social Enterprise & Business Ethics

Presentation

The "Prosperity and Post-Growth" Chair aims to develop interdisciplinary research on socio-economic and justice issues in a "post-growth" world. Faced with an economic growth whose engines seem to be exhausted in high-income countries, which no longer keeps its promises in terms of improving human well-being, and whose effects on the environment are deleterious, it is essential that economic and management sciences question the evolution of inequalities, companies, unemployment and social security.

The mission of the Chair is to participate in the reflection on desirable and prosperous futures in a constrained world, in which social and ecological justice issues are central.

This project, unprecedented in Belgium, is part of an innovative international movement and will complement the emerging field of post-growth studies. It is led by professors from ULiège and ICHEC Brussels Management School.