At the 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management (IRMBAM-2018) conference held at the IPAG Business School in Nice, France from 5 to 7 July 2018.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2018

The annual 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management (IRMBAM-2018) was held from 5 to 7 of July in the beautiful French Riviera city of Nice. The conference was jointly organized by an international coalition of the IPAG Business School of France, South Champagne Business School of France, the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, Canada, the University of Bern of Switzerland, and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis of France. The conference had 15 tracks covering a broad range of topics in economics, management and international business. Notable keynote speakers to this year’s conference in the field of management and entrepreneurship include, Professor David Allen from Neeley School of Business at the Texas Christian University located in Forth Worth, Texas, USA, and Professor Shaker Zahra from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA.

Special sessions were held in the field of (ss1) commodity finance with Professor Brian Lucey from the Trinity Business School, Ireland as invited guest speaker, and (ss2) law and management with Professor Auriane Lamine from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, as invited guest speaker. The conference also had two sub-conferences on the topics of (sc1) family business and (sc2) environmental economics. The invited guest speaker to the subconference theme on family business was Professor Allessandro Minichilli from Bocconi University, Italy. The invited guest speakers to the subconference theme on environmental economics were Professor Nicolas Treich from the Toulouse School of Economics, France and Professor Knut Einar Rosendahl from the Norwegian University of Life Science, Norway.

With its comprehensive themes for academic debate, the conference had aimed at bringing international scholars, practitioners and policymakers in shared interests towards broadening the knowledge and experiences of the field of international business and management. I was session chair to the Knowledge and Innovation Management I track in parallel session B held on the first day of the conference. My own presentation was entitled, Which user of technology? Using linguistics to broaden the research framework of acceptance of new technologies in remote services in multinational enterprises, that aimed combining the theoretical applications of functional linguistics with current models of user acceptance and use of technologies.

The atmosphere at the conference was cordial and interactive. I had chosen to follow most of the tracks on marketing and branding, outside of the papers presented in knowledge management and innovation. Academic traditions differ across disciplines and across institutions. The IRMBAM 2018 had as presentation format, a discussant role in the presentation format. This presentation format encourages deeper discussions to papers presented, for which some sesssions did not allow for in the allotted time frames. This led to a general discussion within my own circle of acquantances as to how to manage the discussant role for each session. While there were no strict formulas to follow, the overall ambience was generally informal, amiable and supportive in discussions.

No conference is complete without coffee sessions and a conference networking dinner. Coffee sessions were generous, with a buffet of French breads, fruits and accompanying hot and cold beverages. The conference dinner was held at the Hyatt Regency Nice, along the legenday Promenade des Anglais, that overlooked the beach front and its evening activities. I could not find anything lacking on the culinary front of the event, the two and a half day event ending in a soft wave of own activities for the participants to pursue after Saturday’s last presentation sessions.

The IPAG Business School campus in Nice, along Boulevard Carabacel.

The IRMBAM 2018 conference registration desk.

Shaker A. Zahra, Professor of Strategy adn the Department Chair, Robert E. Buuck Chair of Entrepreneurship, at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA, delivering his keynote speech on the topic of entrepreneurship as engine of disruption at the IRMBAM 2018 conference in Nice, France.

Cataldo Zuccaro, from the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada, discussing ideas in his paper “Designing promotional offers for customer retention: The case of wireless telephony”.

Andria Andriuzzi explains how brands can express themselves through conversation on social media sites via personification/humanization techniques, allowing them to interact more effectively with their consumers. A theory used in his work is face-negotation and politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1978).

With Parisa Panahi, from the Department of Marketing, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

With Greg Clydesdale of Lincoln University New Zealand. He is author of several books including “The Art of Business: How the Chinese Got Rich” published in 2017, and “Waves of Prosperity: India, China and the West – How Global Trade Transformed The World” published in 2016. he teaches ‘creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.’ His PhD was on the determinants of industrial leadership and economic growth. Greg has published on a wide range of academic topics, his underlying motivation is in understanding drivers of economic growth.

The IRMBAM 2018 conference dinner was held at the Hyatt Regency Nice. This was the view from the ballroom, looking out at the beach along the Promenade des Anglais.


A ballotine of sea bass and vegetables, mashed potatoes with grapefruit, wakame salad and sesame vinaigrette.

Lemon tart wtih meringue.

Beautiful Nice.

References
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction. Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–311.

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