In early June, the 19th International Research Symposium on Service Excellence in Management (QUIS19) was held in Rome, one of the most important conferences in the field of service management. An enriching experience in more ways than one for Victor Sluÿters, a PhD student at the NaDI-CeRCLe research center, who was awarded the "Best Paper Award" by an international jury from over 350 papers.

"Typically, the award is given to a presentation that fits in with the conference theme, which this year focused on digital and sustainable transformation.Although my research project is currently attracting quite a bit of attention, it deviated quite a bit from this theme. So I didn't expect to win an award," confides Victor Sluÿters.

An original approach to crisis management

The thesis paper by Victor Sluÿters - whose work is supervised by Professors Wafa Hammedi (UNamur), Yves Van Vaerenbergh (KU Leuven) and Thomas Leclercq (IÉSEG School of Management) - focuses on data breaches (or data breach) and their management by companies. These are well-known threats feared by organizations for their potentially severe and far-reaching consequences.

Victor Sluÿters focuses more specifically on the psychological mechanisms of shame that underpin employee behavior in a crisis context. This emotion has strong and lasting effects on employee commitment, performance and well-being. Companies therefore have a vested interest in understanding the behavioral mechanisms at work to better cope with this type of event. It was this in-depth psychological dimension of crisis management, still relatively unexplored in the literature, that convinced the QUIS jury.

A human adventure above all

Beyond the scientific recognition, Victor Sluÿters insists on the human aspect of his research work. "We started our thesis at the same time as Floriane [Goosse] and Florence [Nizette]. We really help each other out. We organized very critical proofreading sessions, sometimes tough, but always benevolent.""What's more, we're lucky enough to benefit from excellent support from our promoter, Professor Wafa Hammedi, from both a research and human point of view. And for my part, I can also count on the invaluable insight and support of my two other co-promoters, Yves Van Vaerenbergh and Thomas Leclercq, who contribute enormously to enriching this adventure.", continues the young researcher.

After winning the prestigious "Best Research Paper Award" at the SERVSIG conference by the American Marketing Association in 2024 for her thesis paper, Floriane Goosse, a researcher at the NaDI-CeRCLe research center, is among the two winners of the ServCollab Scholarship 2025, an international doctoral scholarship awarded by an American organization dedicated to promoting scientific research with high societal impact.

No fewer than 37 doctoral students from universities around the world were in the running to receive this scholarship. Two researchers were chosen after an in-depth selection process: Griffin Colaizzi, a PhD student in psychology at Northeastern University (USA), and Floriane Goosse, a PhD student at UNamur within NaDI-CeRCLE.

New technologies to empower people with disabilities

Supervised by Professors Wafa Hammedi (UNamur) and Dominik Mahr (Maastricht University), Floriane Goosse's thesis explores how new technologies, such as intelligent voice assistants, can empower people with disabilities, particularly the visually impaired, and thus significantly improve their well-being.

A high-potential project that convinced the members of the ServCollab jury, made up of eminent researchers in the field. The jury was particularly impressed by the young researcher's methodological rigor and praised her alignment with the principles of Transformative Service Research as well as her deep determination to create a tangible impact on the lives of so-called vulnerable people.

Triple recognition for Floriane Goosse

Floriane Goosse also took part in the 19th International Research Symposium on Service Excellence in Management (QUIS19), the bi-annual benchmark conference in service management, held in Rome in early June. On this occasion, his research once again distinguished itself by winning the prize for best research with societal impact, awarded by the conference's scientific committee. This prestigious international recognition crowns a rigorous and deeply committed body of work. Three major recognitions in less than a year, saluting both the scientific excellence and the strong societal impact of a particularly promising piece of research.

With its 5,000 employees, CHU UCL Namur is a unique field of study. A university hospital and the leading private employer in the province of Namur, it combines care, teaching and research missions, while facing the challenges of a constantly evolving organization. In this context, better structuring projects, reinforcing strategic steering and intelligently integrating technological innovation is becoming an imperative to guarantee the efficiency of processes and the sustainability of the reforms undertaken.

In contrast to other sectors, where projects are often entrusted to professionals trained in classic project management methodologies, hospitals rely mainly on non-professional project managers. These players, be they doctors, nurses, pharmacists, biologists, administrative staff, etc., regularly find themselves piloting strategic initiatives without dedicated project management training. Kevin Lejeune is interested in this reality, and seeks to understand how their intrinsic motivation and ability to structure initiatives in an informal setting influence the success of hospital projects. His doctoral thesis is part of a wider reflection on the balance between professionalization and organizational agility, supported by the academic expertise of UNamur.

While the sponsor is often presented as a key figure in projects, his role remains unclear and unevenly invested in reality. To what extent does his real involvement and interaction with the project manager influence the success of hospital initiatives? Drawing on the theory of leader-member exchange, Kevin Lejeune sets out to demonstrate that it's not so much the presence of the sponsor that matters, as the quality of his or her commitment. His work highlights three essential levers: the sponsor's concrete actions, his relational qualities and his level of involvement. This theoretical framework, nurtured by regular exchanges with the academic world of the EMCP Faculty, aims to provide tangible recommendations for rethinking leadership in hospital governance and better structuring the support of project managers.

The rise of artificial intelligence in healthcare opens up promising prospects, but also raises organizational and psychological resistance. How can we ensure that these tools do not remain isolated experiments, but become genuine catalysts for innovation within healthcare establishments? This is the issue that Kevin Lejeune explores in the final part of his research. He aims to identify the factors that influence the acceptance and integration of AI tools into hospital processes. Far from taking a purely technological approach, he focuses on the psychological and behavioral barriers that condition the adoption of these innovations. In particular, it analyzes the impact of perceived competence, self-esteem and professional recognition on the adoption of AI tools. By crossing hospital fieldwork and academic contributions, notably from UNamur, the aim is to propose implementation strategies adapted to the human dynamics specific to hospitals.

Through this thesis, Kevin Lejeune aims to offer hospitals operational keys to improve the management of their projects, structure the role of sponsors and support the adoption of technological innovations. Combining scientific rigor with a grounding in the field, his work is based on a dual approach: deciphering hospital organizational mechanisms to identify levers for improvement, and ensuring that these recommendations can be implemented pragmatically.

This article is taken from the "The day when" section of Omalius magazine for December 2024.

Four major teaching and research disciplines have marked the Faculty's development and become its pillars over the years: economics and political and social sciences first, then management and communication. "In its early days, the Faculty of Economic, Social and Management Sciences, created by Father Camille-Jean Joset, was united around social sciences and economics," recalls Pietro Zidda, Dean of the EMCP Faculty. "Then, the various fields developed. Management took off, enrolments in political science and communications soared. We were careful to maintain a spirit of collaboration between each of our programs". Far from the usual silos, the Faculty today makes it a point of honor for its chosen disciplines to collaborate, question and nurture each other in order to develop the skills of students and researchers so that together they can contribute to the challenges of a society in transition.

The EMCP Faculty is committed to three major missions. The first is to train responsible experts and decision-makers, through rigorous, hands-on teaching that stimulates critical thinking and openness to the world. It also aims to conduct ambitious, interdisciplinary research with a strong scientific impact, feeding into teaching and innovation. Finally, the EMCP Faculty wishes to act as a responsible player in societal development, sharing knowledge and contributing to informed decisions at regional, national and international levels.

It is therefore quite natural that the FSESG has become the EMCP Faculty, a name now incorporating communication and political sciences and reflecting the importance they have acquired in recent years. Four disciplines united to prepare students and researchers in a transdisciplinary way for the challenges of tomorrow.

The spirit of collaboration is firmly rooted at the heart of the Faculty, which strives to develop transdisciplinary approaches to meet the complex challenges of a society in transition. "To meet these challenges, a solution from a single discipline is no longer enough. We need to think more broadly, with an approach that transcends disciplines," explains Anne-Sophie Collard, Vice-Dean of the EMCP Faculty. A sentiment shared by Zora Gilet, a management engineering student: "This new name above all brings coherence to the Faculty's image and visibility for all the courses on offer. It also represents the intra-faculty diversity that we wish to promote at all levels."

This vision is also accompanied by an internal reorganization, with the creation of four thematic schools or schools: UNamur School of Economics (NSE), UNamur School of Management (UNSM), UNamur School of Social Sciences, Politics and Communication and UNamur School of Evening Studies in Economics and Management. These schools aim to strengthen synergy between disciplines, while promoting a pedagogy that integrates cross-disciplinary skills and innovative working methods. Soft skills, for example, are now systematically integrated into projects, to prepare students to respond to societal challenges in a collaborative and creative way. "I think this change helps to concretize and recognize all the large-scale projects that have been set up in recent years," explains Zora. It's an expression of a desire to develop and innovate, which is more than positive today. I consider myself lucky to be able to witness this change and proud to be part of this community."

"EMCP aims to be the catalyst lever for a future where walls are broken down and barriers between disciplines abolished as much as possible, to provide strong solutions to societal problems," concludes Pietro Zidda. This new name therefore goes beyond mere naming: it symbolizes a renewed commitment to transforming the way graduates are trained, giving them the tools they need to provide strong, coherent solutions to major contemporary challenges.

Within the Faculty, various projects and teaching experiments illustrate this EMCP vision. Examples?

Learning by doing: an approach that offers immersion in concrete projects from the first year, combining knowledge and cross-disciplinary skills to respond to real-life challenges.

Regards croisés: this project invites students and teachers to explore a topical issue from a variety of disciplinary angles, enriched by exchanges with experts in the field at a major final conference.

A little wink, the Dean of Faculty wondered how this fresco would be perceived by an outside audience: "This work is quite original compared to what we usually do. So I asked the artificial intelligence to give me its interpretation. And then, surprise, the answer was bluffing! ChatGPT perfectly identified the meaning and intentions of the project, as if it had read our initial brief", laughs the dean.

Students have also been involved in this transformation, notably through their circles. Thus, the Cercle €co became the Cercle EMCP. "We were contacted by the Dean, who suggested that our Circle should bear the same name as the Faculty, and this seemed to us to be a perfectly natural move. We had many discussions with the dean and the vice-presidents of the Cercle. We put a lot of effort into the name change, but it was an extremely rewarding experience," explains Matthieu Dupuis, President of the Cercle EMCP. "The change may have come as a surprise to some students, but this new name enriches the Faculty's image by enhancing the value of all its courses of study. It embodies strong values and, in my opinion, represents our Faculty better than the old one."