Welcome to the regular Q&A feature where we shine the spotlight on our EHL research faculty and their current work. With a view to going behind the scenes to better understand the fascinating, impactful world of research, the EHL Institutional Visibility team regularly catch up with an EHL researcher whose work is making a difference in both the classroom and industry.
Lionel Saul’s unique academic career has seen him become the first EHL alumnus to pursue a PhD with the support of the hospitality business school. We recently discussed his academic background and the vision behind his thesis on strategic foresight: Understanding the future role of companies in today’s society and how they can contribute to improving our world.
What makes your academic path so unique?
I grew up in Lausanne and did my bachelor’s degree at EHL in 2018, before earning a master’s from HES-SO, the biggest of the specialized ‘hautes écoles’ in Switzerland. The part-time program lasted two years. I walked away with a Master in Business Administration, majoring in strategic foresight (SF). The core courses were held in Lausanne and the SF classes took place at the Haute Ecole de Genève.
SF is an approach that helps a company, industry or country to imagine scenarios for the future, and make strategic decisions to best handle these different futures. That is how I discovered this subject, which forms the basis of my dissertation.
The advantage of this program is that students can choose a professor from any HES-SO as their master’s thesis supervisor. I was able to complete my thesis under the direction of Prof. Cindy Heo, associate professor of revenue management at EHL. In particular, I surveyed environmentally-friendly practices in hospitality management. I then worked on a research project with her, which solidified my interest in academic research.
How has EHL contributed to your academic success?
In 2022, I was fortunate enough to join the team of research assistants at EHL Hospitality Business School. I was able to familiarize myself with research practices including the methodologies used and the themes explored. In spring 2023, EHL asked me to become a visiting lecturer. I hope to become a professor after my PhD so I immediately jumped at the chance. Getting some classroom experience confirmed my interest in teaching. So now I just need to start my PhD!
After this rich and intense semester of teaching, I did a year at a pre-doctoral program at HEC Lausanne where the courses gave me insights into major management theories and research methodologies, which will help me with my dissertation. It was a kind of ‘bootcamp’ that got me ready to start my thesis.
Alongside my PhD, I’m still an EHL research assistant where I participate in research projects and contribute to the publication of academic research papers on topics such as regenerative tourism. This experience has enabled me to develop new competencies that I can immediately apply to my doctoral studies. I’m also working with Prof. Stefan Güldenberg in his role as Editor-in-Chief of the Swiss journal Die Unternehmung (Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice).
What does your academic path mean for EHL?
For EHL, it is also a unique occasion. It’s the first time in its history, which dates back over 130 years, that it is supporting an EHL graduate pursue a PhD. In fact, EHL is not accredited by Swissuniversities to deliver a doctoral degree; however, a framework agreement between HES-SO and the University of Lausanne opened up a pathway to a solution. I’m currently enrolled as a PhD student at HEC Lausanne. I have two dissertation supervisors: Prof. Patrick Haack of HEC Lausanne and Prof. Nicole Hinrichs of EHL Hospitality Business School. I work part-time for both UNIL and EHL.
This arrangement helps me benefit from the expertise of both of my supervisors. I’m very grateful to them for having accepted to give me this opportunity to complete my degree. I’m also able to take the knowledge and skills they share with me and apply those takeaways to my role as a research assistant.
It’s been quite challenging to balance a position at EHL, another job at UNIL and the one-year doctoral bootcamp. But it has taught me to prioritize tasks and focus on what is most important.
My experience will undoubtedly serve as an example for future PhD candidates. I also see myself as a kind of EHL ‘research ambassador’, given that I participate in national and international conferences pertaining to research in the field of management. This allows me to ‘publicize’ research that is going on at EHL and potentially create future collaborations with other institutions.
Going back to your thesis, what is strategic foresight?
For me, SF is the way in which society and companies in particular imagine the future 30 years from now. It’s about how we picture the problems of tomorrow while providing operational solutions today. It is crucial for us as a world to be able to envisage the futures; that’s right ‘futures’ with an ‘s’ as several hypotheses could indeed play out of course.
I’m currently focusing on how SF can help companies better understand societal issues by imagining scenarios of the future. Firms have a choice: either contribute negatively to society’s ills or provide solutions to mitigate them. With SF, organizations can project themselves into potential futures and try to understand the systemic impacts of these futures.
How is SF a new concept? Haven’t these ideas always existed?
That is a good question. Of course, certain aspects of this framework concept already exist. Yet, from an academic point of view, it’s only been in the past few years that they’ve started garnering attention. Researchers are increasingly striving to derive a theory about how to mobilize the future to influence our society. From a more prosaic standpoint, maybe what is new is the frenetic speed at which our world is changing and becoming more complex.
Let’s take a practical example. The luxury automobile manufacturer Porsche stands to lose, according to its own estimates, between 1 and 2 billion euros in the wake of devastating floods in Valais. You’re probably wondering what Porsche has to do with weather conditions in the Swiss canton of Valais?
Porsche relies heavily on a special aluminum alloy produced by a company in Valais. But production came to a screeching halt when the machines were inundated and so did Porsche’s assembly lines. Perhaps if Porsche had imagined a scenario about meteorological impacts on its supply chain, then it could’ve prepared an appropriate action plan. Maybe Porsche did, but apparently it wasn’t quite ready.
How is SF different from other management concepts such as stakeholder analysis?
I’m asked this a lot, which is why I’m eager to explore this issue in the first article I’m planning to publish as part of my PhD. I’m going to look and see what has already done by researchers in the area of SF and related concepts such as future thinking, future practices and future making. The goal will be to understand what differentiates it from other management practices.
The second article will seek to shed light on the how stakeholders can agree on a shared vision of the future despite their diverging interests. The third will survey the various visions of the future role of companies in our society. Elon Musk, for example, seems to think that companies need to expand the limits of our society, namely by conquering space.
Yet others, like hotels specialized in regenerative tourism, are trying to create a symbiotic relationship with terrestrial ecosystems. Those are two opposite visions that would be interesting to compare and contrast. Those starkly different visions will contribute to shaping the future of our society. That’s what I hope to study in any case, we’ll see if things change in the coming months as I start to conduct my research.
Does strategic forecasting also apply to hospitality?
Yes, as an EHL alumnus, I believe it applies particularly well to hospitality – an industry that relies heavily on external factors that it can’t really control such as exchange rates, the price of gas and jet fuel as well as climate change and environmental advocacy. Hospitality is an industry that is subjected to the vagaries of a lot of different variables. So the more it is able to project itself into the different scenarios of the future, the more resilient hospitality will become.
This is very clear in Switzerland where ski resorts are struggling to adapt to warmer winters. Are we going to be skiing much longer at lower-altitude ski areas? At what point to resorts give up on skiing altogether? How can they take their ski area in a new direction? Government aid, private investment, a marketing campaign?
Those are all questions that need to be resolved in the near future. Being able to see yourself as part of different futures might seem abstract but its practical applications are as pivotal as they are prolific.
Lionel Saul is a Research Assistant at the EHL Hospitality Business School and doctoral student at HEC Lausanne, under a co-supervision agreement between HEC Lausanne and EHL Hospitality Business School. His research interests center around future-making practices, as well as their contribution to the ecological transition and other contemporary grand challenges. Lionel has contributed to leading journals and participated in international conferences in hospitality and tourism. Moreover, his ongoing projects on future-making practices target a broader array of academic publications in the field of management.
Before shifting his focus to academia, he was active in political think tanks, where he co-authored a foreign policy brief for the Swiss government. Lionel holds a MSc in Business Administration with a major in Strategic Foresight.
Lionel’s contributions: Read more
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