September was a month rich in conference activity, both in France and on the international scene.

ESSEC Faculty was much in evidence at four events in particular, starting with the Sixth International Society of Dynamic Games workshop in Rabat (Morocco), September 5-8. Held every two years, the 2007 edition was co-organized by ESSEC Professor Fouad El Ouardighi (Logistics Production and Service Department) and Georges Zaccour (Chair in Game Theory and Management, GERAD, HEC Montréal). The purpose of the society and each biennial conference is to promote and foster the development and real-life application of dynamic game theory, a management science that consists in the creation of paradigms aimed to assist decision-making, competitive situations and potential conflict.

The ESSEC-KPMG Financial Reporting Chair staged the third annual European Financial Reporting Research Group conference on September 12-13 on the Cergy campus. The co-holders of the Chair Professors Peter Walton and Wolfgang Dick (both of the Accounting and Management Control Department) were present to welcome experts from the field. This informal group of researchers examined such issues as the harmonization of European accounting standards from a number of perspectives, including French and via comparison with Anglo-American approaches.

The new buildings on campus also hosted another event just a few days later, on September 20-22. The third German-French-Austrian Conference on Quantitative Marketing was held under the umbrella of ESSEC’s Centenary. Instrumental in organizing the three-day conference were Professors Albert Bemmaor (Marketing Department, ESSEC), (Humboldt University) and Udo Wagner, (University of Vienna). Global in nature, discussions centered on matters of consumer behavior, brand loyalty, and advertising, amongst many others.

Finally, Professor Marie-Laure Djelic (Management Department) was invited as guest speaker to the prestigious Uppsala Lectures in Business on September 26-28, at the University of Uppsala (Sweden). The Business Studies Department of the university has held the event every year since 1984 and this year Professor Djelic was the distinguished scholar called upon to give three lectures on the following topics of her choice: "Changing Forms of Capitalism, Globalization and the Marketization of (nearly) Everything?”, "Sociological studies of diffusion - is history relevant?”, and "Moral foundations of contemporary capitalism: from markets to marketization".