HEC Montréal

About: HEC Montréal is a education organization based out in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Vehicle routing problem. The organization has 1221 authors who have published 5708 publications receiving 196862 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal & HEC Montreal.

To Frack or Not to Frack? The Interaction of Justification and Power in a Sustainability Controversy

Abstract: How could a de facto moratorium on shale gas exploration emerge in Quebec despite the broad adoption of fracking in North American jurisdictions, support from the provincial government and a favourable power position initially enjoyed by the oil and gas industry? This paper analyses this turn of events by studying how stakeholders from government, civil society, and industry mobilized modes of justification and forms of power with the aim to influence the moral legitimacy of the fracking technology during a controversy surrounding shale gas exploration. Combining Boltanski and Thevenot's economies of worth theory with Lukes’ concept of power, we analytically induced the justification of power mechanisms whereby uses of power become justified or ‘escape’ justification, and the power of justification mechanisms by which justifications alter subsequent power dynamics. We finally explain how these mechanisms contribute to explaining the controversy's ultimate outcome, and advance current debates on political corporate social responsibility.

Institutional Determinism and Political Strategies An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: This article offers a rare study of the content and performance of political strategies in China’s highly institutionalized setting. A conceptual framework based on institutional theory findings is proposed to develop a set of expected political behavior. This is then confronted to data from a convenient sample of 233 firms. The results show that there are indeed recognizable patterns of political strategy, most of which are bent by the strong institutional environment toward accommodation rather than confrontation or defiance. The strategies identified were found to be related to the nature of the firms’ available resources and to the firms’ ability to extract benefits or bend the government’s behavior in their favor.

Solving a large multi-product production-routing problem with delivery time windows

Abstract: Even though the joint optimization of sequential activities in supply chains is known to yield significant cost savings, the literature concerning optimization approaches that handle the real-life features of industrial problems is scant. The problem addressed in this work is inspired by industrial contexts where vendor-managed inventory policies are applied. In particular, our study is motivated by a meat producer whose supply chain comprises a single meat processing centre with several production lines and a fleet of vehicles that is used to deliver different products to meat stores spread across the country. A considerable set of characteristics, such as product family setups, perishable products, and delivery time windows, needs to be considered in order to obtain feasible integrated plans. However, the dimensions of the problem make it impossible to be solved exactly by current solution methods. We propose a novel three-phase methodology to tackle a large Production-Routing Problem (PRP) combining realistic features for the first time. In the first phase, we attempt to reduce the size of the original problem by simplifying some dimensions such as the number of products, locations and possible routes. In the second phase, an initial PRP solution is constructed through a problem decomposition comprising several inventory-routing problems and one lot-sizing problem. In the third phase, the initial solution is improved by different mixed-integer programming models which focus on small parts of the original problem and search for improvements in the production, inventory management and transportation costs. Our solution approach is tested both on simpler instances available in the literature and on real-world instances containing additional details, specifically developed for a European company’s case study. By considering an integrated approach, we achieve global cost savings of 21.73% compared to the company’s solution.

Sense-Making In Compensation Committees: A Cultural Theory Perspective

Abstract: Drawing on Mary Douglas’s cultural theory, our research analyzes the cultural schemes or biases mobilized by compensation committee (CC) members, in the context of public companies, when making sense of their committee’s work. Relying on semi-structured interviews mostly conducted with CC members in Canada, our analysis brings to the fore the production of moral and rational comfort within the boundaries of the individualistic and hierarchical culture. Under an individualistic bias, the compensation market is seen as natural, providing conditions of possibility that serve to establish fair compensation through the creation and enforcement of contracts. Under a hierarchic bias which emphasizes principles of objectivity and measurability, members of CCs tend to conceive the design of compensation policies as an act of expertise, relying extensively on consultants and measurement techniques to determine acceptable reward boundaries. Not only does our paper contribute to corporate governance literature by pro...