Word from the editor

This new regular issue of Management international features a range of original articles that differ in terms of their treatment of the themes addressed, the methodologies applied and the sectors or regions involved. The contributions chosen for this issue include: Faten Lakhal, Sabrina Khemiri, Sami Bacha and Assil Guizani’s article “CEO overconfidence and tax practices: Does board gender diversity Matter?”, which finds within a sample of listed French companies that a correlation exists between CEOs’ level of overconfidence and their tendency to engage in unethical tax evasion. The discovery is made that board gender diversity mitigates such behaviours, suggesting that female directors can serve as an effective control mechanism. The findings have important implications for legislators who might consider gender diversity in leadership positions (above and beyond corporate boards) as a means of sustaining tax revenue. Liliane Bonnal and Xavier Moinier’s contribution “Empowering connected patients: A boon for the French pharmaceutical industry” focuses on the way in which new patient negotiating processes bolster pharmacists’ relational and transactional strategies, thereby benefiting their businesses. Similarly, patients who use eHealth tools are more autonomous and better informed, hence likelier to engage in a constructive questioning of their pharmacist. Identifying these new levels of empowerment (and the impacts thereof) reveals itself to be a useful way of monitoring the courses of treatment that pharmacists prescribe. Yihan Wang, Ekaterina Turkina and Normand Lemay’s article “Industrial competitiveness and FDI opportunities in the metropolitan periphery - Product space network analysis of Laval, Canada” assesses local industries’ complexity of knowledge and revealed comparative advantage (RTA). In turn, this can help entrepreneurs and policymakers to identify which sectors are most important to a given locale (and implement the appropriate competitive strategy) while attracting FDI flows into “structural hole” sectors characterised by types of knowledge similar to the ones where the product space network in question enjoys a RTA. To address these points, the authors perform a quantitative analysis of the Laval (Canada) product space network, along with a qualitative thematic analysis involving semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and policymakers. Eba Amoan Edwige N’da, Chayé Danielle Larissa Domoa, Anne-Laure Boncori and Eric Braune’s article “Modalities of running and supporting mompreneur business networks: An Ivory Coast case study” starts by noting the particular attention that the academic world pays to economic and social issues associated with female entrepreneurship. One case in point is Africa, where women are increasingly viewed as a crucial pillar of development, and which has therefore witnessed the recent creation of a number of mompreneur networks. The article is a case study, within an African context, of the modalities by means of which mompreneur business networks are being supported, as well as the contributions that they then make. Based on a sample of 75 Ivory Coast mompreneurs, it both shows that networks promote psychological, professional and family support mechanisms underpinned by emotional, cognitive and conative drivers and identifies several of the moral, identity-related, transgenerational and therapeutic benefits that they bring. Florence Crespin-Mazet, Olivier Dupouët, Karine Goglio and Marion Neukam’s article “Harnessing internal communities: the role of boundary structures” mobilises two in-depth case studies to ascertain how the new knowledge that internal communities produce can be integrated into corporate activities and procedures. The main contribution here is to highlight the crucial role performed by boundary structures located at the interface between communities and organisations’ managerial strata. Said structures interlink all of the boundary work that is needed to integrate community work (strategic alignment, managerial validation of negotiations, etc.). It is a role that goes well beyond a simple dissemination process in the sense that it combines and adapts management and …