8th INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS FAILURE
ESCE International Business School, Coeur Défense, 82 Esplanade du Général de Gaulle
92934 Paris La Défense
26th and 27th November 2026
“Trajectories of Economic Vulnerability: Determinants, Consequences, and an International Perspective.”
In collaboration with the University of Mons, the Institute SOCI&TER and OMNES Education
The financial health of French and international companies is going through a critical period, marked by a succession of phases of fragility ranging from financial distress—sometimes passing through “zombification”—to outright bankruptcy (Banerjee and Hoffmann, 2018). This continuum reflects the growing pressures faced by many economic entities. So-called “zombie” firms are characterized by their inability to generate sufficient revenues to cover their financial expenses, while continuing to operate thanks to external financing. According to a study by France Stratégie, around 40% of these companies manage to become viable again after three years, while 30% eventually go bankrupt, illustrating the precariousness of their situation.
In 2024, France recorded 67,830 business failures, an increase of 17% compared with 2023. The fourth quarter of 2024 was particularly worrying, with 18,709 failures, a historical record for that period. These figures indicate that companies’ difficulties now go beyond the simple post-Covid catch-up effect.
Some sectors have been hit harder than others. The construction sector alone accounted for 24.8% of bankruptcies in 2024. Real estate agencies experienced a spectacular rise in failures, with an increase of 31% compared with 2023. Other sectors, such as hospitality and food services and business services, also recorded significant increases in failures, of 44.4% and 20.1% respectively (propulsebyca.fr).
The social consequences of these business failures are considerable. In 2024, 256,000 jobs were at risk, an increase compared with the 243,000 jobs threatened in 2023. SMEs and mid-sized companies are particularly vulnerable, with a 51% increase in failures compared with 2019 (Altares).
In light of this situation, it is crucial to analyze the mechanisms that lead from financial fragility to bankruptcy, in order to better understand the dynamics at play and to propose appropriate solutions. This conference aims to explore these trajectories of economic vulnerability by highlighting risk factors, early warning signals, and possible prevention strategies.
In the current context of economic, political, and climate-related uncertainties, focusing on business distress and its final stage—namely bankruptcy—is of major importance not only for lawmakers and bankruptcy practitioners, but also for employees, creditors, and the local and national economy. The 8th interdisciplinary conference on business failure will be devoted to analyzing companies’ economic vulnerability and advancing knowledge of this phenomenon, both in terms of its causes and its consequences for all stakeholders.
Call for Papers
Far from being a rare event that happens only to others, bankruptcies have now become a permanent feature of the business landscape, both in France and around the world. Bankruptcy affects not only employees’ living conditions but also the economies of entire cities and regions.
Broadly speaking, five major areas of research can be distinguished in relation to business distress and bankruptcy.
The first is predominantly strategic. Many authors have sought to understand bankruptcy through the lens of the environment and competition (Grainger et al., 2009; Pal et al., 2011; Heracleous et al., 2016). In these studies, organizational and behavioral variables are emphasized to explain the bankruptcy process. Within this stream, authors consider that a firm’s success or failure is due to both internal factors (financial, organizational, productive) and external factors (environment, new technologies, growth and life cycle, etc.).
The second is predominantly organizational and managerial. The aim here is to understand the adaptive capacity of structures (organizations), processes (management systems in place), and the behavior of actors (the role of the manager). Fundamentally, all these approaches seek to identify the characteristics of firms (including their type of management at the beginning of the 21st century) and of managers (age, experience, education, etc.) in order to predict bankruptcy (Argenti, 1976; Mardjono, 2005; Appiah and Chizema, 2015).
The third is predominantly financial. The pioneering works are those of Beaver (1966) and Altman (1968). This gave rise to a very extensive body of literature on bankruptcy models. The underlying idea of all this work is that the explanation for bankruptcies can be found through financial statements.
The legal perspective constitutes the fourth stream from which many studies have emerged. Broadly speaking, this is the “Law and Economics” approach. Within this body of work, authors seek to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the legal framework in resolving financial distress. Ultimately, all the questions in this field of research revolve, more or less, around the search for an ideal legislative framework according to the following criteria: creditor protection, respect for priority rules, and economic efficiency (Blazy et al., 2014). One of the major problems is that bankruptcy legislation does not, a priori, always pursue the same primary objectives (the case of France compared with that of Great Britain is the best example) (Davydenko and Franks, 2008; Hotchkiss et al., 2008).
The entrepreneurial approach is more recent and seeks to delineate the entrepreneurial process (Jenkins and McKelvie, 2016). In this approach, research focuses on the manager through their cognitive abilities, risk aversion, emotions (Shepherd and Cardon, 2008), learning capacity, or the consequences of failure for the manager, particularly through the stigmatization of the entrepreneur. Failure must be considered at two levels (that of the firm and that of the individual). Research is more interested in the manager for who they are, what they want, or what they feel, rather than for what they do or the actions they undertake to manage their firm’s difficulties (Eklund et al., 2020).
Ultimately, the phenomenon of failure is now considered a genuine object of study that attracts the interest of many researchers and practitioners, especially as failure and bankruptcy are increasingly distinguished from the notion of infamy, even though the latter remains prevalent in certain countries such as France.
Although the main theme of this edition of CIDE is related to the economic vulnerability of firms, any submission adopting an empirical or theoretical approach addressing all aspects related to bankruptcy and the survival of financially distressed firms is welcome. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
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Identification of the determinants of bankruptcy / corporate distress,
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Relationship between management (governance, human resource management, etc.) and failure,
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Accounting and failure,
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Bankruptcy and law,
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Entrepreneurship, failure, and distress,
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Recovery, survival, and support,
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Mechanisms and instruments (tools) for preventing corporate distress,
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Business transfer, costs, and consequences of failure,
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Human resource policies, corporate risk, and value destruction,
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Relationship between managerial characteristics and SME failure,
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New management practices and firm survival,
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Bankruptcy case studies (economic, managerial, and/or legal perspectives),
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Managerial outsourcing in a context of distress,
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Bankruptcy and managerial strategies,
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Climate change and financial distress,
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Financial health and uncertainty,
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Bankruptcy courts,
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Employees and corporate insolvency,
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The phenomenon of zombification.
This conference will provide an opportunity to discuss these issues by bringing together researchers, faculty members, and doctoral students, primarily in the fields of management sciences, economics, and law. All papers relating to concepts of failure in the broadest sense are welcome. We invite you to develop critical, new, and original perspectives on a wide range of themes related to failure.
At the end of the conference, authors who wish to do so may submit their paper to La Revue des Sciences de Gestion (FNEGE 4). Article proposals are reserved exclusively for conference participants. Selected papers will be published in a regular issue or a thematic dossier of the journal. All articles will be subject to a peer-review process in accordance with the journal’s standard policy. La Revue des Sciences de Gestion will waive submission fees for articles submitted as part of this issue.
Bibliography
Altman E.I., 1968, Financial ratios, discriminant analysis and the prediction of corporate bankruptcy, Journal of Finance, vol 23, p. 589-609.
Appiah, K. O., & Chizema, A. 2015. Remuneration committee and corporate failure. Corporate Governance, vol 15, issue 5, p. 623-640.
Argenti J., 1976, Corporate Collapse: The causes and symptoms, Halsted Press, New York.
Banerjee R., Hofmann B., 2018, The rise of zombie firms: causes and consequences, BIS Quarterly Review, p. 67-78.
Beaver W.H., 1966, Financial ratios as predictors of failure. Empirical research on accounting, selected studies, Journal of Accounting research, 4, p. 71-111.
Blazy R., Martel J., Nigam N., 2014, The choice between informal and formal restructuring: the case of french banks face distressed SMEs, Journal of Banking & Finance, vol 44, p. 248-263.
Davydenko S.A., Franks J.R., 2008, Do bankruptcy codes matter? A study of defaults in France, Germany and the U.K., Journal of Finance, vol 63 (2), p. 565-608.
Eklund J., Levratto N., Ramello G.B., 2020, Entrepreneurship and failure: two sides of the same coin, Small Business Economics, vol 54, p. 373-382.
Grainger, N. J., McKay, J. S., & Marshall, P. H. 2009. Learning from a strategic failure.
Heracleous, L., & Werres, K. (2016). On the road to disaster: Strategic misalignments and corporate failure. Long Range Planning, 49(4), 491-506.
Hotckiss E., Mooradian J., Thornburn K., 2008, Bankruptcy and the resolution of financial distress, Handbook corporate finance, vol 2, ed. Espen Eckbo, Elsevier.
Jenkins A.S., McKelvie A., 2016, What is entrepreneurial failure? Implications for future research, International Small Business Journal, vol 34, issue 2, p. 176-188.
Mardjono, A. 2005. A tale of corporate governance: lessons why firms fail. Managerial Auditing Journal, vol 20, issue 3, p. 272-283.
Pal, J., Medway, D., & Byrom, J. 2011. Deconstructing the notion of blame in corporate failure. Journal of Business Research, vol 64, issue 10, p. 1043-1051.
Shepherd D.A., Cardon M.S., 2008, Negative emotional reactions to project failure and the self-compassion to learn from failure experience. Working paper, Indiana University.
Practical Information
Organizing Committee:
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Prof. Xavier Brédart, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Mons
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Prof. Eric Séverin, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Lille
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David Veganzones, Associate Professor, ESCE, OMNES, Paris
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Vipin Mogha, Associate Professor, ESCE, OMNES, Paris
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