AIRMAP is an academic association that brings together French and non-French institutions and researchers specialising in the fields of public management and public action. Its main objective is to promote multidisciplinary public and non-profit management research and by so doing make an active contribution to the development and dissemination of knowledge in this field.

As a space enabling exchanges between academicians and actors in the public and noncommercial spheres, AIRMAP also lends itself to the exploration of the ideas, approaches and innovative instruments that are most likely to enhance the design and practice of public action.

Centred on the theme of “Responsible and integrated public management: between tradition and innovation”, the 14th AIRMAP conference will be held on Wednesday 4, Thursday 5 and Friday 6 June 2025 at the UVSQ (Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) / Université de Paris-Saclay), where the Larequoi laboratory and ISM-IAE Institut Supérieur de Management will have the pleasure of welcoming AIRMAP participants for the second time, having organised the Association’s first conference in 2011. Most of the 2025 AIRMAP conference will be run in France’s Yvelines département, largely divided between sessions held in the dynamic new town of Saint-Quentin and festivities run in the beautiful historical city of Versailles.

AIRMAP is inviting management and social science communities – together with representatives from other disciplines interested in these fields – to produce presentations broadly relevant to the conference theme. This includes:

• theoretical communications ;
• fieldwork or case studies ;
• talks relating to innovative approaches, analyses, instruments and methods

The event will specifically highlight :

• the pluralism and variety of theoretical, contextual and methodological approaches
• diagnoses and processes drawn from local or comparative fieldwork
• novel remote operational approaches
• new dynamics introduced by young researchers

Conference theme

In a specifically public sector context, the notion of managerial responsibility comes with connotations that are different from (albeit complementary to) certain general concepts that are being applied in other domains, be it the administrative, legal or political responsibility exercised by states (in their various avatars) or else the sense of societal responsibility embedded in commercial corporate policies. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the logic underpinning responsible public management is idiosyncratic and should be construed as such.

Public management researchers and practitioners are already well aware of the fact that the compartmentalised and ad hoc approaches currently being pursued in this domain are too reductive hence insufficient to address the full range of challenges and necessary actions found in the public and/or non-market spheres. Notwithstanding the risk of inertia and dysfunctionality that can arise when analysis gets overly complicated, it would appear that where approaches are more systemic – and management and strategy processes more transversal – it becomes easier to uncover the full complexity of public action situations, as well as the consequences thereof. In this sense, public management benefits when it is viewed through more of an integrated filter.

The 2025 AIRMAP conference will therefore take a deeper dive into responsible and integrated public management by coming at this theme from a variety of perspectives.

The concept of responsible and integrated management1is meant to account for the sometimes contradictory interests of (and challenges faced by) an organisation’s various stakeholders (Hermel and Bartoli, 2013). It encompasses ethical dimensions as well as the social, economic and environmental implications of an entity’s activities. Management – when apprehended in its transversal forms (e.g. in terms of its processes,
systems, approaches, dynamics, etc.) – normally seeks inter alia to prevent an excessively specialisation-based compartmentalisation of operations, preferring instead an openended consideration of problems and situations; an objectives-oriented search for (and guidance of) solutions and projects; and a lucid prediction and steering of actions’ consequences.

This type of management paradigm is, of course, directly relevant to public action, being a domain where responsibility is readily construed as a principle that is fundamental but also problematic because of all the implementation hurdles involved, especially in contexts defined by major changes (Larat and Bartoli, 2018). The proliferation of different types of stakeholders and different forms of action in the public and non-market spheres; the risk that accountability will be diluted due to the complex nature of the interactions in these fields; the interspersing of individual and collective levels of action; and the attenuated disconnect between organisations’ internal and external dimensions – all these trends are creating new challenges and issues for public action, requiring in turn a revisiting of its design and implementation processes.

Hence the need to question the meaning and scope of public systems’ managerial and strategic responsibility in light of the developments moulding their environment today, first and foremost being the big changes affecting the scale and shape of sy stems. While it may seem tautological at first, the concept of responsible and integrated public management does in fact address a number of very current issues while also revealing a paradigm shift marked by value-related tensions (Chanut, Chomienne, Desmarais, 2015).

Focusing on this theme also implies that a balance be found between the traditional frameworks and principles which govern and legitimise public action, versus the innovative or exploratory dimensions that public processes require in order to adapt to a context which is itself undergoing profound transformation (Chevallier, 2017). Having said that, balancing tradition and innovation also raises questions about what types of knowledge public management research should be producing. Clearly, they need to be both overarching and actionable (Argyris, 1993). In an era marked by the rise of artificial intelligence, algorithms and digital technology, it is incumbent upon all to reflect upon the differences between knowledge, belief and opinion (Khan, 2021). In short, responsible public management is a construct that should further elucidate the debate about the meaning of (and stakes involved in) actors’ participation in their organisations and, indeed, in society as a whole. It is an opportunity to revisit the organisational boundaries (Pupion and Trebucq, 2019) that exist, for instance, between functions, teams, external/internal interfaces and, more broadly, humankind and the natural world (Latour and Schultz, 2022). One particularly significant illustration of this in the field of health and ecology can be found in the “One Health” approaches where challenges relating to human and environmental well-being are always viewed in tandem (Hervé et al, 2022).

The 2025 AIRMAP conference will speak to the many possible variations surrounding these questions. Inter alia, it will address the following themes: forms of responsibility associated with all the different stakeholders operating in the field of public management ; transversal approaches in the management of public organisations; the balancing of (and duality between) tradition and innovation ; change processes and reforms in the public and non-market spheres; the dynamics underlying the transformation of work in public systems ; ethics and inclusion-related challenges and responses; and the role that both public sector managers and also politicians play in addressing major societal challenges.

Bibliographical information

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