Pauline Fatien Diochon

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Grenoble Ecole de Management

Given the prevalence of instrumental and positivistic accounts on coaching, our article aims to contribute to a critical theory of coaching by articulating two under-researched topics in the field: power and space. We do so by building on the Lefebvrian political approach to space; more specifically, we show that depending on the coach’s experience...

Our paper explores the under-examined political dimension of space in organizations through the study of power dynamics in third spaces, i.e., hybrid spaces characterized by an inclusive and permissive social context. Our context is the pioneering corporate Fab Lab at Renault car manufacturer where we conducted a two-year study of participant obser...

The ethical sensemaking approach stands as an essential alternative to the dominant rational and objectivist paradigm of ethical decision-making in organizations. From this perspective, this research explores the intrapersonal interplay of emotions and reflexivity in ethical sensemaking. We analyzed thirty-seven semi-structured interviews conducted...

Given the complexity of organizations, individuals nowadays are handling an increasing number of commitments. When these commitments come into conflict, they can turn into ethical dilemmas. However, little is known about how individuals make ethical decisions in the face of such conflicting commitments. We investigated this issue within the context...

Neutrality in coaching, as an often‐mentioned yet under‐theorized norm of practice, is illustrative of how a lack of conceptualization leaves professionals with eclectic and contradictory tools and techniques. Therefore, the current study examines coaches' attempts to practice neutrality, with diverse implications for their conceptions of professio...

Happy-productive worker thesis (HPWT) research predicts four configurations depending on well-being and performance levels, one synergistic and three antagonists; however, there has been some discrepancy in the expected results of HPWT, as there are some inclusive results about the specific characteristics that lead to each one of the predicted gro...

Cet article répond à un besoin de penser la soutenabilité des dispositifs de coaching, au regard de leurs effets potentiellement contre-productifs. En appui sur la sociologie clinique, nous interprétons que le coaching peut produire des effets non soutenables quand il contribue à perpétuer et occulter les contradictions organisationnelles dans lesq...

Entrepreneurship scholars have become increasingly interested in new collaborative spaces—such as incubators, makerspaces, and coworking spaces—that support entrepreneurial ventures. However, limited attention has been paid to entrepreneurs’ embodied capacity to transform these collaborative spaces into places for entrepreneuring. In response, we p...

Ce chapitre propose une réflexion sur le paradigme de l’enseignant-coach. Dans un premier temps, les auteures introduisent les caractéristiques associées à la posture de l’enseignant-coach et à celle de l’élève coaché. Dans un deuxième temps, elles explicitent les conditions et les modalités de cette pratique pédagogique, soit créer un espace sécur...

This paper addresses calls for developing eco-centric approaches to sustainable management learning that challenge the anthropocentric technocratic foci of established models. A growing concern is that despite declarations of climate emergencies, programs making a sustainable turn perpetuate rather than challenge the status-quo. A key issue is that...

Coaching and Menoring scholars! Have a look at our Call for Papers with Management International. We welcome papers in French, English and Spanish. Calls in each language are available on MI website Submission deadline is March 1st, 2024! We are available for questions and support in your writing progress! https://www.managementinternational.ca/a...

Demands to re-embed coaching into its larger social context of operation have generated calls to better document the political aspects of this human learning and development process. To address this critical social turn, this empirical article explores the reframing by practitioners of their understanding of coaching practice, using a Freirean lens...

How does a collective succeed in practicing the same kind of attention together? This is an essential question for organizations that need to develop a common focus of attention, but it is difficult to address because the objects are multiple and in competition with one another. The attention-based view (ABV) highlights the central role of organiza...

Cet article théorique pense les conditions propices à l’émancipation dans le coaching à partir de la perspective complexe de la psychosociologique et de la sociologie clinique. Ce cadre permet de présenter le système organisationnel contraint dans lequel le coaching s’insère comme un enchevêtrement de tensions contradictoires qui forment des nœuds,...

Dans sa pratique traditionnelle qui a dominé au xx e siècle, le coaching fait symptôme d’organisations et d’une société où prévaut une logique instrumentale et réifiante. Nous pensons qu’il peut en être autrement et que le coaching peut aussi faire remède et accompagner vers une société plus responsable. Cet article se nourrit de différents ancrage...

How does a collective succeed in practicing the same kind of attention together? This is an essential question for organizations that need to develop a common focus of attention, but it is difficult to address because the objects are multiple and in competition with one another. The attention-based view (ABV) highlights the central role of organiza...

Hierarchy is a key – but under-studied – lens for critically exploring leadership. The critical literature suggests that both mainstream and alternative leadership contribute to the perpetuation of hierarchy. In mainstream leadership, even in its most recent forms in allegedly ‘flattened’ organizations, hierarchy continues to exist and followers of...

Ethics in coaching is often approached through an individual psychological angle, attributing ethical issues to misconducts, which should be solved through appropriate behavioral solutions. We argue that this micro angle reduces the complexity of ethics in coaching, and especially depoliticizes the debate. The risk is to undermine the role of macro...

Entrepreneurial coaching comes with particular challenges compared to coaching other client groups, and this analytical case seeks to sensitize students to these specificities and discuss the associated key challenges for coaches. It puts students into the shoes of Frédéric, who, after a successful career as an entrepreneur and investor, has turned...

This paper offers an alternative perspective on achieving contextual ambidexterity in organizations. Building on a collaborative research project within Renault’s Innovation Department, we identified that the corporate Fab Lab acted as a parallel structure in support of contextual ambidexterity. These findings provide three main contributions. Firs...

Our article depicts and interrogates the claims for seeing coaching and mentoring as being distinct from each other, and rather suggests that context is agentic in determining which aspects of these two helping orientations are likely to be used by practitioners. To start with, our article traces the development of coaching and mentoring as two sep...

This one-day annual conference showcases research conducted by Masters and Doctoral students in the International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies, as well as guest speakers from other Universities. This conference is of interest to all practitioners, academics and students of coaching and mentoring. Every year it attracts a wide variety...

This article looks into the issue of autonomy, often portrayed as a key feature of modern work arrangements, in particular of Independent professionals (IPros). Given the absence of conclusive evidence in the current debate opposing structural and agency views on autonomy at work, we study how Ipros perform their job referring to three main analyti...

SAGE Publishing continues to grow its teaching case collection, SAGE Business Cases, across the business and management spectrum while zeroing in on topics we care deeply about. The Coaching and Mentoring series aims to publish and disseminate creative business pedagogy that inspires students to think beyond their own advancement and focus on how t...

Complex Situations in Coaching is a collection of 20 typical yet under-discussed issues in coaching, ranging from value conflicts, multiple agendas, power dynamics, and emotion management, to the role of money, etc. Organized into 10 chapters, they are positioned into the literature and commented on by world-class coaches, coaching researchers, edu...

This exercise aims to familiarize students with the under-discussed topic of the role of context in coaching through a physical activity. It consists of a Group Sculpture-a combination of Socio-drama, Systemic Constellation, Social Presencing Theater-drawing from a coaching case of an ethical dilemma, using the placement and arrangement of particip...

The above quotation taps into something within the human condition that is potentiallyat least, very powerful. We, human beings, have aspirations; flying might be just one ofthem! But the central point here is that “the majority of people” often comply or silencetheir aspirations. In some contexts around the world, silence and compliance could bese...

Across organizations, most leadership development programs share a similar formalized and centralized structure. This similarity reflects a neglect of the specific contexts in which leadership development programs are implemented. The objective of this article is to understand the insensitivity to organizational contexts that is inherent in the str...

Although most ethics development programs favor cognitive, individual, and top-down approaches, our article discusses, using the illustrative example of Volvo Group's CreaLab, the cohabitation of multiples ethical discourses in organizations and implications for human resource development (HRD). We introduce the concept of the ethics of serendipity...

Traditional approaches to social innovation focus on products, services, and ideas that enable social problems to be solved. They also often view social innovation as resulting from a cross-fertilization between multiple stakeholders. We advocate for a process-based approach to social innovation internal to organizations, anchored in the concept of...

Que devient un paradoxe organisationnel quand il est délégué aux individus ? Cette question, cruciale dans un contexte où les individus héritent de plus en plus d’un travail de gestion des paradoxes autrefois assuré au niveau organisationnel, n’a pas de réponse unique. L’étude conclut en effet « contre un déterminisme des paradoxes » puisque le typ...

The limited reach of management research results in missed opportunities to support the decision-making processes of business professionals and policy makers. To strengthen the impact of management research and overcome barriers posed by text-heavy representation, we advocate for the use of creative mediums (e.g., collage, film, poetry) to showcase...

Traditional organizational learning settings operate as in-class training sessions where knowledge is transferred from one who “knows” to mostly passive recipients. Such designs portray learning as essentially individual, cognitive and a-contextual. However, in recent years, the emergence of leadership development through outdoor activities, MOCCS...

What is coaching and mentoring? What is E-development? Why it is in expansion today? Examples of programs and apps? Why are organizations using e-dev? What are some benefits? What are some challenges? From the perspective of the users, those who implement, those who use the e-services? What are some good practices and recommendations? How can we se...

Alrededor del tema del liderazgo existen tendencias, corrientes de pensamiento, propuestas de análisis y hasta modas. En los últimos años, por ejemplo, se ha visto un incremento en la oferta de servicios de coaching, liderazgo y gestión empresarial. Estos programas, talleres, seminarios y mentorías se enfocan en guiar a líderes y miembros de organi...

This panel symposium explores the ethical challenges that arise from the inherent boundary condition of coaching. In particular, we will introduce typical ethical dilemmas resulting from coaching at the interface and envision them as a source of development, both for self and the organization. Composed of international researchers and coaches, the...

This third collection of outstanding contributions from the Critical Management Studies (CMS) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM) continues to challenge business practice in ways not tackled by other more typical business case studies. There is a critical need for business educators to expose students and managers to the multifaceted pheno...

This Workshop at the 2nd International GSAEC Conference aims at raising awareness on the role of Context in Coaching.

In a context described as Volatile Uncertain Turbulent and Ambiguous (VUCA), coaches are increasingly called in by leaders to support the implementation of alternative disruptive change solutions. In this track, we first look for contributions that explore the nature of this support at the micro (focused on skills), meso (complex relationships) and...

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1350507617711835

Con los Egresados de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana debatimos acerca del Coaching, una práctica que aparece como una respuesta más y más evidente ahora en las organizaciones. En esta presentación, hablamos de ese hecho y nos involucramos en un proceso de desnaturalización del mismo. Primero, explicamos que el éxito del Coaching podría estar co...

Né dans les années 1990 et popularisé par les mouvements de psychologie positive, le concept d’engagement au travail porte avec lui la promesse d’une vie professionnelle épanouie, appuyée sur une vision consensuelle et harmonieuse des organisations. Pourtant, la course effrénée à la mobilisation ne risque-t-elle pas de conduire à une obéissance ave...

This theoretical paper discusses the specific challenges posed to educate managers to be effective manager-as-coaches. We first explore the requisite skills and capacities that managers need to effectively coach their employees as part of their managerial responsibilities and the challenges that this added portfolio of responsibilities pose. Second...

In an organizational environment experienced and described as increasingly turbulent, recently captured with the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) acronym, leaders are increasingly called in to innovate and disrupt established routines and ways of thinking. Most approaches to leadership and leadership development then focus on the a...

For more than 20 years now, organizations all over the world have increasingly been using coaching in the hope of fostering the development of the organization and of their employees (Garvey, 2011; Segers, et al, 2011). The recourse to and acceptance of coaching as a vehicle for individual and organizational development may be associated with the d...

This article explores the challenges for individuals and organizations of adding coaching to the repertoire of managers. In complex and dynamic environments, a manager becomes responsible for developing people for continuous learning, which transforms him or her into a manager-as-coach. However, the resulting expanded capacities and skills require...

Au travers de l'analyse de la décision d'une direction de recourir (ou pas) au coaching individuel pour faire évoluer certains comportements de ses managers, le cas vise à amener les étudiants à : - Replacer les pratiques de management des ressources humaines dans leur contexte stratégique ; - Identifier les incidences des évolutions stratégiques s...

Conference for SF Coach and IISAP, May 2015, France

While most coaching scholars and professionals focus on the role of codes of conduct in sustaining ethical behavior in the practice of executive coaching, our research answers the call to go “beyond the book.” Our study aims to describe restrictions identified by executive coaches to the application of codes to ethical conflicts. The analysis of 27...

A positive if not positivist discourse in coaching tends to portray the coaching intervention as value-free, thus overlooking the intrinsic complexity of the practice. Indeed, coaches tend to depart from their ideal position as neutral third party when their values are challenged, making it difficult to remain in the contract boundaries. Thus the p...

In today’s organizations where complexity and change dominate, coaches appear as legitimate third parties to help clients navigate these demanding contexts. Coaches are thus credited with virtues such as facilitation, benevolence, low directivity, at the benefit of the client and/or the organization. This positive – if not “positivistic”, view of t...

This paper builds on the literature that explores the renewed form of power in postmodern organisations. Specifically, it explores the practice of executive coaching. Using an interpretive approach and an adbuctive method, the article confirms and illustrates the critical literature that analyses coaching as a practice for organisational control. H...

Rather than portraying the coaching space as developmental, increasing researchers have described it as a space for conformation, a practice for renewed forms of discipline. Using the critical incident method, this paper explores the nature of the coaching space. Our analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews of coaches confronted to tricky situatio...

La reprise d’entreprise est une pratique entrepreneuriale spécifique bénéficiant pourtant de peu de dispositifs d’accompagnement propres. Notre analyse de deux dispositifs existants met en avant leur caractère directif et court-termiste, ce qui s’avère limitant dans un environnement complexe et évolutif. C’est pourquoi nous montrons les apports pot...

Through a study of 20 semistructured interviews using the critical incident method, this article explores the nature of the multiple agendas within the triangular relationship that connects the coach, coachee, and an organization and the challenges associated with their management. The article suggests prerequisites to coaching program applications...

Cet article se penche sur le processus de développement de la réflexivité et de la critique dans le cadre de la formation au coaching. Nous avons confronté le processus proposé par Cox à deux expériences de diplômées de la formation CAPP. Notre étude offre quatre contributions principales : 1. l’illustration d’un processus théorique, 2. la confirma...

Le coaching professionnel est fréquemment considéré, tant par ses analystes que par certains acteurs de terrain comme une pratique ambiguë, confuse et chaotique. Ces caractéristiques sont perçues négativement et donnent lieu à des discours et à des écrits qui visent à clarifier les objectifs et les postures des coachs, à distinguer le coaching d’au...

While the role of business coaching in organizations has recently been questioned, this article demonstrates that French coaches are far from remaining silent or inactive within this discussion. In fact, these practitioners identify two major critical dimensions (institutional and individual) that translate into specific behaviors. This study contr...