Meet Sarah MAIRE, Professor of Management Control on the Paris-La Défense campus.
With a team of over 700 professors, including 200 permanent researchers, IÉSEG shapes learning around a modern approach: active pedagogy, interdisciplinarity, skills development and personalized academic paths, offering each student a tailor-made experience.
In our “Faculty in the Spotlight” series, discover each month one of the School’s professors who reveals their way of teaching, their commitment, and anecdotes from their journey at IÉSEG.
Could you tell us a bit about your background?
I began my academic career with a Master’s degree in CCA (Accounting, Controlling and Auditing) at the University of Lorraine. It’s a highly professionalizing degree, which essentially leads to careers in accounting, auditing and control firms.
After my Master’s degree, I got a work contract at EY. I really enjoyed my time there and I loved my CCA master’s degree, particularly for the reasoning and questions it raised. However, I felt that I wanted to explore broader and deeper issues, and seek a greater intellectual challenge. So, I decided to apply for a PhD in accounting. Between the CCA master’s and the PhD, I obtained the DSCG (Diplôme Supérieur de Comptabilité et de Gestion), which is required to become a chartered accountant. This gave me all the credentials I needed to enter the profession, but my desire to push my thinking further and raise questions led me to research. I became a contract doctoral student at the University of Lorraine, where I taught courses alongside my research activities. After completing my doctorate, I was hired as a professor-researcher at IÉSEG.
Your interest in teaching began at an early age…
Yes, I’ve always loved teaching. I gave my first tax courses at the start of my doctorate at university. I have also been a ‘BAFA’ trainer since I’m young, so teaching has always been part of my career. What I like about teaching is the opportunity to pass on knowledge, but also to develop students’ critical faculties. Research is fascinating, but teaching allows for direct interaction, which is very enriching.
What courses do you teach at IÉSEG, and what does it involve overall?
My area of expertise covers accounting, control and auditing, with a particular focus on management control. I would say that my courses are divided into three main groups. Firstly, there are the courses related to management control, such as “Cost Accounting” and “Management Control”, which are introductory courses to the subject, in the Bachelor cycle. These are really introductory courses, with initial costing exercises to help students understand what they’re for. At the Master’s level, the Strategic Performance Management course is a more advanced course and relies heavily on Harvard case studies to put the knowledge into context. In this course, my students discover the importance of adapting tools to suit organizations and developing their critical thinking skills, since, unlike tax and accounting, control is not regulatory. For example, one of the classic tools of management control is the budget, which contains major operating rules, but which cannot be copied and pasted from one organization to another. It needs to be fine-tuned according to the sector, the corporate culture, the company’s specific human resources, etc.
I also teach courses that link management control and information systems, such as those on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). In these courses, I teach students how to use SAP, a business management software, through a game. They learn how to make accounting entries, and build and monitor key indicators, with the aim of ensuring the survival of their business via SAP software.
And finally, I teach French taxation, which is a law course designed to give students an overview of French taxation. First, we explore the purpose of taxation and its impact on businesses and individuals. The tax system changes regularly, so you need to know the basics and master the vocabulary and reasoning principles underlying the calculation of different types of tax. You need to know the processes, and know where to go to find reliable information, and understand it. It’s information that is officially declared to the State, and which can have consequences. So there are ethical and regulatory issues at stake for future accountants and auditors.
How has your field of expertise evolved over time?
For tax courses, it’s impossible to keep the same content from one year to the next, because it’s correlated to regulatory developments. The subject is constantly evolving, and so is the course.
As far as management control is concerned, there are issues of course modernization, as we are seeing an evolution in the problems faced by companies and a modernization of tools. We are even sometimes confronted with the effects of fashions in the methods used in companies. So we always have to keep abreast of what’s going on in the professional world. On the other hand, the increase in social and environmental regulations also implies the potential adaptation of control tools, in particular management control, which is a decision-making tool. Since decision-making is impacted by regulations, the management control system must necessarily be adapted to new needs and take these new issues into account.
When it comes to ERP, my courses evolve naturally, as SAP software is constantly evolving from a technological point of view. I always have to keep an eye on new developments.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
The interaction with the students is very stimulating. For example, in my tax courses, unexpected questions sometimes come up, such as when we talk about real estate transfer tax: “How does it work for religious buildings?” When I don’t have the answer on hand, I make a note to do some research and bring the answer to the next class. That’s why I always have a slide with the questions I didn’t know how to answer in the previous class. Finally, I also learn from the students, because they push me to look for information that I don’t have.
What do you particularly like about IÉSEG?
I think I have excellent teaching and research conditions at IÉSEG. My accounting department is made up of colleagues who are both very friendly and dynamic in their research. There is real support for research activities at the School, and that’s something I really appreciate.
My Master’s course, based on real-life case studies, is certainly a lot of work, but it’s also intellectually enriching to be able to work with students on concrete issues. What I particularly like about it is that it encourages more dialogue and allows us to go further in our thinking than a traditional lecture.