A word from the professor Hervé Corvellec

Hervé Corvellec, Professor and Senior Lecturer

What is your academic background and what did you do before you started teaching at Lund University?

"I have a business administration background, which I acquired at the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP Business School). After that, I got my PhD in business administration at Lund University, and then I worked for Kristianstad University College, Gothenburg University and Malmö University College as visiting Professor. Before I came to the Department of service management and service studies, I was teaching business ethics and CSR organisation theory."

Could you describe the programme in Service Management with specialisation in Sustainable Service Management?

"The programme is based on two kinds of courses, generic courses and specialised courses. Generic courses will relate to the management of services and theories of social science. What is even more interesting in the sustainability context are the specialised courses. They will show to the students that there is much more to say about sustainability than the classic economic, social and environmental perspective and introduce notions of governance, how to organise sustainability, assessing environmental impact, social sustainability and sustainable consumption for example. In addition to this, students have the possibility of taking up elective courses that they can direct towards sustainability issues, for example about political science and sustainability or risk and sustainability. So, all in all, two-thirds of the credits allocated relate towards sustainability."

What sets this programme apart from other Master's programmes in the field?

"We have something which is quite distinct. We have a very clear social science approach to sustainability. It is not a natural science approach, it is not a technological approach and it is not purely an economical approach either, even though we often have a management perspective. We really want to emphasise the very high level of embeddedness of economic activities in society. In this programme, students will be given the opportunity to definitively go beyond the point that economic activities are an end in themselves. Thanks to the very diverse backgrounds of my colleagues, students will discover that the impact of society on businesses and the impact of businesses on our society make it impossible to disentangle the two. For example, you cannot understand the development of electric car mobility unless you have an understanding of how new technology is perceived as legitimate by customers, what is the importance of profitability for a new mobility offering and in which ways electric mobility is not the rupture that the electricity lobby depicts."

How does the programme meet the needs of the labour market?

"I would say that the service industry has been flying under the “sustainability radar” for a long time, but today people are aware and it means that suddenly there is a kind of deficit of knowledge. They need to hire people because they do not know how to deal with their sustainability impact, how to measure it or how to manage it. The service industry will need to rapidly transition and we believe that our students can provide the answers that the service industry needs. They need people, like our students, who can think differently and are trained to challenge what is currently done, to invent ways of doing things for the future."

What are you currently working on in terms of research projects?

"I am working on different circular economy projects. We have just released a paper about the critiques of the circular economy, which was very well received by the public. I'm also working on a project about resources and what will be considered a resource in the future."

What would the students be surprised to find out about you?

"I have been flying a lot for a very long time, I was even taking internal flights in Sweden. When the first articles from my colleague Stefan Gössling were published ten years ago I decided to stop flying. Another thing that they surely couldn’t expect is that I was doing ski ballet when I was a young boy!"