15.1. Introduction

Entrepreneurship accounts for 86% of global GDP (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2018) and today plays a central role in France’s economic development. Echoing European directives, which aim at promoting entrepreneurship, national political and institutional initiatives in this dynamic are multiplying, as is the “Pépites” (Nuggets) scheme, which targets, in particular, the young entrepreneurs of tomorrow. What are the contributions of a master’s degree in an entrepreneurship apprenticeship in Business Schools? What is the added value for the company?

15.2. Entrepreneurial culture in Business Schools: the case of EM Strasbourg

EM Strasbourg is developing a strong culture in favor of a real entrepreneurial dynamic:

• – entrepreneurial center: “La Ruche à Projets” (The Hive Project) aims to bring together entrepreneurial activities carried out within the school (diploma courses, awareness-raising activities, research team and START’EM pre-incubator);
• – development of research on entrepreneurship;
• – bachelor’s program, “young entrepreneurs” (student and executive programs): pedagogy is based on learning-by-doing, teamwork and the development of student leadership;
• – two master’s programs (student and executive programs) in entrepreneurship: the Master Grande École and the State Master, which are the cornerstones of our chapter.

The master’s degree in entrepreneurship at EM Strasbourg is as much at the level of a specialization of the Grande École program as it is at the level of a university master’s degree; the latter developing double diplomas as part of the Master Grande École and the State Master. Although oriented towards entrepreneurship, these three programs are adapted to student populations with different needs. The Grande École program is intended for students who have no experience in business and who are looking for a transversal specialty that does not confine them to a specific function of an organization. The State Master’s degree completes an already well-fed experience in a company (executive profile) with generally a successful entrepreneurial project. Finally, the bachelor’s program involves students from different backgrounds (with or without a baccalaureate) whose objective is to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit before obtaining a degree in a context of reverse pedagogy. The master’s degree in Entrepreneurship at EM Strasbourg allows candidates to engage in entrepreneurship in the most common sense, or even to help in the development of a company, either as internal actors or as advisors. The average number of students over the last three years has been 50. The number of new business start-ups averages four per year for the two courses (student and executive programs). Otherwise, about 86% of students/apprentices are recruited no later than six months after graduation. This master’s degree aims, through the version with student and executive programs and the version with apprenticeships, to develop management skills adapted to needs in various contexts:

• – the creation and takeover of companies;
• – strategic business development, intrapreneurship and innovation;
• – strategy consulting.

15.3. The apprentice in post-graduate entrepreneurship as a “strategic relay” within the company

During periods spent in companies, it is common for some apprentices to be called upon to work on strategic assignments, when they are not recruited upon leaving. Indeed, authors such as Pennafore (2012) note that there is a gap between the significant organizational commitment of apprentices seeking a long-term relationship with host companies and the latter’s responses, which are geared more towards a short-term relationship. Moreover, the temporary presence of those working towards effective strategic engagement, while remaining non-disruptive agents within the organization, due to a non-recruitment agreement, remains contrary to theoretical models positing that the company cannot outsource activities that are either strategic or essential in nature. In this sense, Williamson had already pointed out, in 1975 – in support of his transaction costs theory – that the agents made available by the market, in this case apprentices, should only include resources that demonstrate a dual characteristic, namely:

• – low specificity, i.e. resources that are easily available on the market, or even capable of quickly filling positions requiring a low level of qualification;
• – a relatively low frequency of use of these resources by the company.

This does not seem to be the case for these graduate students. So why is this apprenticeship so successful that entrepreneurs recognize it? Part of the answer is provided by stakeholder theory, which is based on two assumptions. The first is that the organization has relationships with several groups that affect and are affected by the company’s objectives (Freeman 1999). The second is that stakeholder interests have intrinsic value, knowing that none of the interests are supposed to dominate the others (Clarkson 1995; Donaldson and Preston 1995). This last theory alone is not enough to explain the agreement between the stakeholders. Two other theories seem to complement their motivations. These are the theory of implication, and, in particular, the theory of psychological contract (Rousseau 1989). They emphasize the importance of individual subjective interpretations. With regard to the situations experienced within the framework of the Strasbourg School of Management, although the answer to the question of shared interests appears complex, two explanations have emerged.

Firstly, the time dedicated to the organization, by highly qualified students without the promise of being hired, fosters positive attitudes and benevolence on the part of the organization’s other employees. By being legitimized, apprentices can be effective quickly, motivated by the practice of the theoretical concepts they have learned, to increase their experience and write the first lines of their resume. It remains clear that stakeholders, leaders and apprentices share the knowledge of the agreed rules through a clear affirmation by means of a discourse that inspires trust. This trust, which Granovetter (1985) understands as the object that the individual assumes about the functioning of institutions, or which psychologists define in terms of the hope and consent of a third party who engages in a transaction (Simon 2007), does not admit any kind of injustice (Campoy and Neveu 2006), nor the slightest connotation of falsity. Discourse, and in particular that of those who take responsibility for supervising an apprentice, must therefore fulfill several functions. With regard to other employees, its role is to avoid “deviant” behavior on the part of those involved with the apprentice that could call into question their function, or even their position in the company hierarchy. As for the apprentice, they must both convey the message of non-recruitment and inspire enough confidence for the latter to embrace their assignment.

In both cases, the discourse can be subversive, generating opposition and jeopardizing the apprenticeship contract. The facts show that discourse has always served as a confidence-generating persuasion for students to fully engage in their assignment. This is because of its strategic nature and in the learning and acquisition of a trade, as well as a multitude of experiences conducive to social relationships and the discovery of intellectually stimulating tasks, appropriate to their level of education (Alves et al. 2013).

The situations experienced within EM Strasbourg therefore allow us to obtain a complex answer to a question that appears simple at first sight: how can we knowingly explain why those who contribute to the strategic evolution of companies are not necessarily and definitively taken on by the organization? This answer can only consist of snippets of reasons. Economic realism, on the one hand, the construction of a career on the other, as well as the games of potentially competing participants etc., are all explanatory elements. In this sense, a postgraduate apprenticeship represents an opportunity for companies to initiate change by making apprentices real strategic partners, even if they can cause temporary disorder. As Hervé Séryex¹ points out: “Any organization that wishes to move forward must be able not only to accept imbalance and disorder but also to encourage it. Opposition is creative.” Is the apprentice more useful because they renew the company’s skills and knowledge on a long-term basis, or because, as a foreign body, they temporarily support and facilitate a necessary change process in the right direction? The following analysis provides additional insight into this issue.

15.4. Apprenticeships, a lever for developing the company’s dynamic capabilities

Let us consider new skills ranging from the mastery of English in a small structure looking towards international development (small artisans in the agri-food sector for example) to multidisciplinary skills that can bring together the activities of an organisation that is not used to cooperating with larger companies (marketing and production). This can be done through the integration of updated skills with respect to ageing know-how in areas where the obsolescence of methods, techniques and knowledge is accelerating, such as information technology or logistics in these sectors the apprentice can leave deep imprints in the organization where they work. In which way can the apprentice be such a powerful source of added value for the company that in some countries, such as Switzerland, it is attributed as the main cause of the low unemployment rate in the economy? Already, the many examples of apprenticeship assignments that we have been able to follow in our entrepreneurship and other specialties, show that sometimes the apprentice is integrated into the company, and also (and to an even greater extent) that they remain an intermittent change agent, either because they do not wish to be integrated or because the company does not want to take on, or cannot take on the apprentice. We know that this last situation is never to the disadvantage of the apprentice who, in addition to the experience gained during their assignment, will obtain a first job faster compared to the student populations in initial training.

In many cases, our apprentices in the master’s cycle will indeed bring missing skills that are necessary for the company’s successful development. Of course, this does not eliminate the opposite effect of the company acting as a new source of skills and know-how for the student, but both aspects must be considered. We could testify to the many situations where the apprentice’s advanced knowledge of English will allow the company to try its first developments abroad. There are also many examples of situations where the role of the apprentice was to test new forms of development that would accelerate the design of certain products by connecting consumers, marketing and production. Their combination of neutrality and cross-functionality in the company’s organization chart was seen as an asset that was difficult for a typical employee of the company to achieve. This neutrality is vital for test assignments that employees could not do very often during internal competition for specific hierarchical positions. It is easier to confide in a foreign body “out of competition” than a competing colleague. In addition, we can affirm that the use of apprentices is sometimes a way for the company to renew its aging know-how. Take the case of a logistics subsidiary of a large bank whose manager has no other solution but to refresh the outdated knowledge of a workforce trained a few years ago on the job. For such functions, in the context of a large banking group, hiring can only be done through the parent company’s subsidiaries.

There are many benefits to apprenticeships, including, in terms of human resources management, limiting the risk of making mistakes in hiring. But in all these examples, we realize that the use of an apprenticeship allows the organization to open up its environment in order to draw from it the skills it needs to adapt and develop. This is a new form of more open organizational arrangement, in a business design based on the flow of strategic resources (Hamel and Prahalad 1994), analyzed in terms of dynamic capability renewal. At the origin of the concept, Teece et al. (1997) define dynamic capabilities as “the ability of a firm to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external skills in order to respond to a rapidly changing environment”. They are intimately linked to the notion of change and the updating of accompanying skills. They correspond to an organizational skill. A little later, the emphasis will be placed on the importance of the external skills required for this adaptation and on the way in which the company will attract them, either through inter-company cooperation (Lorenzoni and Lipparini 1999) or arrangements such as joint ventures (Kodama and Shibata 2013).

Other authors (Danneels 2008) will refine the notion by studying the depth of the changes at stake and distinguish between operational capacities (simple improvement) and dynamic capabilities (renewal of practices). Felin et al. (2012) will add an essential component to dynamic capabilities by observing that, to be effective, they need activation mechanisms that the authors identify at three levels: at the level of individuals in the organization, of the social processes involved and finally at the level of the overall structure. The authors observe, for example, that hiring a manager (or other category of staff) from outside the company is a way of incorporating new skills. It can also be a vehicle for change in the social processes on which the company is based. For example, it can convey a cooperative culture acquired in a previous job and transfer it to a largely closed innovation. We claim that by providing a new perspective, the apprentice can be a carrier of these dynamic capacities in terms of both operational improvements (operational capacity) and the renewal of existing practices (dynamic capacity). This critical view of the master’s apprentice on what they observe in their organization is part of the academic requirements and will lead to the completion of an internship thesis. The exercise consists of not simply describing a company’s practices (internship report) but of proposing ways to improve, in agreement with the apprenticeship manager. Whether the apprentice remains for one year or disseminates this renewed knowledge over a longer period of time, their contribution can be a factor in adapting to change, from which few companies escape.

15.5. Conclusion

Whether it leads to integration or is limited to the duration of an assignment, an apprenticeship is an essential link between the worlds of education and business. If this link is found in the genes of the education system, as in Germany, with the presence of Fachhochschulen throughout the country, or in the professional gaps between the bachelor’s degree and the resumption of master’s studies in the UK, or in a generalized apprenticeship system, as in Switzerland, it must be noted that it has been damaged in France. There are many reasons for this, rooted in several decades of educational reform, but an apprenticeship should play an important role in the necessary reconciliation between school and business.

What better extension exists for the learner than this real-time collaboration between their acquired knowledge and its fields of application? The student gains extensive experience on their CV and their teachers find in it an ever-changing source of questioning and improvement of educational programs. What better way for the company to have access to knowledge it lacks for a commitment whose cost remains quite modest? We must be careful not to use this time-sharing pedagogical approach as a way to avoid in-depth changes and the renewal of skills within the company. Because that would lead to organizational inertia and immobility of the structure concerned, which would end up being harmful in terms of added value. The apprentice must remain a vehicle for change and adaptation, not a means of renouncing transformation.