DSM PhD Day 2025

The Doctoral School in Management UCLouvain - UNamur (DSM) is pleased to invite you to the 2025 DSM PhD Day that will be held at the UCLouvain in Louvain-la-Neuve

 

Schedule

Time	Speaker / Session	Duration	Title / Details
8h30 – 9h	Welcome	30 min	—
9h05 – 9h10	Opening session — I. Poncin	5 min	—
9h10 – 9h35	1. Emma Innocente	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach for Efficient Assignment in Peer-to-Peer Crowdshipping
9h35 – 10h00	2. Arnaud Germain	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	Early Warning System for Non-Performing Clients
10h00 – 10h25	3. Diane Detry	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	Smart retail technologies: their impact on social presence, customer experience, and engagement. Application to a smart fitting room.
10h25 – 11h55	COFFEE BREAK	30 min	—
10h55 – 11h20	4. Ophélie Duquesne	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	Retailer’s channel-based differentiated promotional practices: An empirical investigation of consumer fairness perceptions
11h20 – 11h45	5. Schinckus Malik	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	Large Language Models for Process Knowledge Acquisition: Designing and Evaluating a Multi-Agent System
11h45 – 12h10	6. Lionel Delatte	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	Exploring the Diversity of Corporate Engagement with Startups
12h10 – 12h35	7. Sana Larif	25 min (20 min presentation + 5 min Q&A)	How do social incubators deal with their funders’ expectations? Evidence from Morocco and Tunisia
12h35 – 12h40	Closing remarks	5 min	—

The presentations will be followed by a festive lunch at 12.40 pm

LouRIM Research Day 2026

On March 06, LouRIM will hold its annual Research Day! This event will highlight the great research done in our institute during the past year. It will also be the opportunity to share ideas, learn from each other, and connect with people through their research. We invite you to join us for inspiring presentations, discussions, and networking.

Programme:
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Lunch
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Presentation of the LouRIM Seed Fund 2024 Winner
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm – Presentation of the LouRIM Seed Fund 2026 Projects
3:30 pm – 4:00 pm – Break
4:00 pm – 4:30 pm – Announcement of the Results

Public thesis defense of Gregory De Boe

HOW TAX POLICIES SHAPE CORPORATE PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIORS: Insights from Circular Economy Transitions for Plastic Packaging in Europe

 

Business & Society Research Seminar 2026

Business & Society Research Seminar 2026

Responsibility under Pressure: Sustainability & Inclusion in times of polarization and backlash

 

The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Ghent University and Vlerick Business School, in collaboration with multiple academic institutions, are thrilled to host the 2026 edition of the Business & Society Research Seminar. The theme of this year’s edition is:

Responsibility under Pressure: Sustainability & Inclusion in times of polarization and backlash

We are living in an era of intersecting crises (ecological, social, political, and economic) that increasingly reinforce one another. Societies face accelerating climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, geopolitical tension, social inequalities, polarization, and rapid technological disruption. These crises reshape the expectations placed on organizations and intensify debates about their broader societal responsibilities.

In this turbulent context, organizational commitments to sustainability, inclusion, and societal impact come under pressure. What was long viewed as a moral and collective imperative is increasingly reframed in instrumental or strategic terms. As public scepticism rises and polarization deepens, efforts related to sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) risk being deprioritized, diluted, or contested. This creates a pressing paradox: the need for responsible and inclusive organizational action has never been greater, yet its moral legitimacy appears increasingly fragile.

This seminar invites participants to explore how organizations, and the people within them, can continue to create meaningful societal value despite growing resistance, ambiguity, and competing demands. We aim to understand how responsibility is interpreted, practiced, challenged, or defended across different levels of analysis: from individual motivation and identity work, to organizational strategies and leadership, to shifting institutional norms and societal expectations.

By bringing together emerging and established scholars, the seminar seeks to foster dialogue on how sustainability and inclusion can remain credible, resilient, and transformative in an age of crisis, and what this means for research, practice, and the evolving relationship between business and society.

We welcome contributions from various organization-related research fields (e.g., business ethics and philosophy, management and organization studies, strategy, marketing, accounting, finance, entrepreneurship, and sociology) and research methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed, and conceptual). Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• How can organizations effectively involve internal and external stakeholders in co-creating solutions that advance social, environmental, and ethical objectives?
• What role can social movements play in shaping organizational responsibility and fostering systemic societal change?
• How can social entrepreneurship initiatives be designed and scaled to generate both organizational resilience and measurable societal impact?
• How can business-nonprofit partnerships be structured to maximize shared value and long-term social and environmental outcomes?
• How can organizations maintain CSR and DEI initiatives during times of deprioritization?
• How can circular economy and sharing economy principles be integrated into business models and governance to support sustainable practices?
• What leadership, governance, and decision-making approaches enable organizations to embed corporate social responsibility at the core of strategy in turbulent contexts?

Informal research seminar by Camille Charles & Ophélie Duquesne

Biased or not biased? Exploring consumer’s ability in detecting biased recommendation agents

Camille Charles, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Caroline Ducarroz, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Corentin Vande Kerckhove, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations

Summary

Recommendation agents (RAs) help consumers navigate extensive online product assortments by providing personalized recommendations aligned with their preferences. Yet, an increasing number of online merchants now use biased RAs - systems that integrate not only consumers’ preferences but also the merchant’s strategic objectives. Among the forms of bias that can be incorporated into RA’s recommendations, society-centered bias - such as nudging consumers toward healthier food options - has become particularly salient as retailers position themselves as health-oriented actors. Despite its growing prevalence, little is known about whether consumers recognize such practices or can detect these subtle forms of bias. This research empirically investigates consumers’ ability to detect bias in RA’s recommendations. We test a theoretical model examining how bias intensity in recommendations affects bias detection performance and how this relationship is moderated by consumers’ experience with the RA. We also investigate the psychological mechanisms involved through the mediating roles of perceived personalization and perceived usefulness, and analyze how perceived bias influences consumers’ attitude toward the online merchant. Drawing on agency theory and signal detection theory, five hypotheses are tested across two experimental studies using a fictitious e-commerce platform with algorithm-based recommendations. By identifying when and how consumers detect society-centered bias, this work advances understanding of consumer vulnerability to online merchants’ business practices. It contributes to research on personalization, algorithmic fairness, and digital marketing by clarifying the mechanisms of bias detection and their consequences for consumers’ attitude toward the online merchant, and by identifying the threshold at which health-oriented nudges become noticeable. From a managerial perspective, it highlights the need for greater transparency and enhanced digital literacy to safeguard consumer autonomy in data-driven marketplaces.

Keywords: Recommendation agent, Personalization, Bias detection, Manipulative practices, Society-centered bias

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Is Price Fairness a Matter of Communication? The Role of Retailers’ Communication Practices in Channel-Based Price Differentiation

Ophélie Duquesne, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Caroline Ducarroz, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Simon Hazée, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations

Summary

In an omnichannel context where channel-based price differentiation is widely adopted by retailers, transparent explanations for the motives underlying price discrepancies across online and offline channels play a critical role in shaping consumer responses. Drawing on signaling theory, this multi-study research investigates how and when retailers’ communication practices foster consumer acceptance of higher online than offline prices. Study 1 assesses the relative effectiveness of different communication approaches - emphasizing retailer’s cost structure, consumer added value, and societal considerations - and identifies the communication practice that most effectively enhances consumers’ perceptions of price fairness. Study 2 further examines whether the magnitude of the price difference (low vs. high) between channels moderates the impact of these communication strategies on perceived price fairness. Altogether, these findings provide theoretically grounded and managerially relevant insights to help retailers enhance perceptions of price fairness when adopting channel-based price differentiation.

Keywords: Price fairness, Communication practices, Channel-based price differentiation