le 24.03.23
Interview of Jack Ilmonen, DBA student
Paris Campus
My professional path is hybrid in many ways. I am a banker by background and after a master’s degree in finance I worked for about 15 years in Germany for a European market leader in financial services in specialist and management positions. During my PhD studies, I combined my professional
experience in finance and my academic interest in cross-cultural management and compared management development in German and French banks.
With this profile, my career in Germany was in a way predefined, but privately my family then moved to France and I had to learn that qualifications and experience are rewarded differently in different countries. I thus built a new career in higher education, first as a freelance lecturer at various well-known French business schools and since 2011 as a permanent professor of management at ISC Paris.
I completed my academic qualification with the French Habilitation in 2022. At ISC Paris, in addition to my teaching duties, I take on other responsibilities such as leading a master’s program and heading
the management department. On the research side, I publish in internationally recognized journals on the topics of intercultural management, diversity, human resource management, and organizational behavior.
I am teaching a course in ‘research design’ together with another colleague. This is a methodological course and of importance for the overall strategy and analytical approach of the students’ DBA research work. In this course we work out how to integrate the different components of their research study in a
coherent and logical way to thoroughly investigate the research problem. I also supervise DBA students as a tutor during their research project and, of course, have a special focus on ensuring that an appropriate research design is chosen and followed.
In one of my current research projects, I study the influence of art on management education on the one hand, and on well-being at work on the other. In a more recent study, for example, we found that the interaction of art with diversity in companies increases the positive effects of diversity, which
leads to a work environment that is conducive to creativity and innovation.
Building on professional experience, the DBA at ISC Paris allows candidates to take time and distance to reflect on management problems and combine practice with theory. This leads to developing new ideas and finding new tools that contribute to their further professional development. The teaching at ISC
Paris is adapted to the background of the DBA candidates and consists of methodological classes but also fundamental classes taught by an international body of professors. In order to allow students to continue their professional activity, the courses are delivered both face-to-face and online. Our program is open to a variety of candidates from different sectors and countries, which makes the exchanges among them lively and interesting and enriched by the diversity of perspectives.
