Research Interest

Topics

Industries

Biography

Sergio Vasquez Bronfman is professor of information systems at ESCP Europe. He has a degree in Information Systems Engineering and a Doctorate in Business Science (Université de Paris I - Sorbonne). He has also pursued postgraduate studies in Science, Technology and Society.
His research and teaching focus is on the relationship between strategy and information systems, and on the "human factor" of IS implementation (participative systems design, power games, art of improvisation, etc.).
In addition, since the early 1980s he has worked in the field of educational technology, focusing on pedagogic innovation. He invented and implemented the first learning experiences with the Internet at ESCP-EAP, and he developed a large consultancy activity in this field and in knowledge management.
He has published several articles and papers on educational technologies and pedagogical innovation, as well as on the strategic and managerial aspects of information systems.

Current research

Tactics matter: Power, Politics, and Improvisation in IT Projects Implementation.
Building on the French school of organizational sociology (Michel Crozier), on Claudio Ciborra's interpretation of phenomenology applied to IS implementation, and on general literature (Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Honoré de Balzac’s novels), I aim to establish distinctions and create practices which help practitioners in these areas, which are critical to the success of IT-based projects.

Bridging the knowing-doing gap.
The goal of this research programme is to create learning systems aimed at bridging what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton call "The knowing-doing gap", in other words the gap between what people listen to in classrooms and what they do every day at work. These learning systems can be enhanced, or not, by educational technologies.
In order to bridge the knowing-doing gap, I build first on the work of well known educational thinkers like Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner, but also on the work of philosophers like John Dewey and Martin Heidegger. Also, I build on Seymour Papert and Roger Schank research on the applications of IT to education; on Henry Mintzberg, Donald Schön, and Reginald Revans on professional adult learning; as well as the work of John Seely Brown, Jean Leave and Etienne Wenger on situated learning and communities of practice.

Publications