“On the shoulders of…” Marc Bloch (1886-1944), by Ludovic Cailluet
Professor at EDHEC Business School and Associate Dean, Ludovic Cailluet reflects on the humanist legacy of a key intellectual figure of the XXth century, co-founder of the Annales School and French resistance fighter executed in 1944: Marc Bloch. For this series, “On the Shoulders of...,”* he seeks to shed new, more intimate light on the influence of this historian's ideas and positions on his own career.
* This title is inspired by a phrase used and adapted over the centuries by many intellectuals, and refers more directly in France to Jean-Claude Ameisen's famous France Inter programme, Sur les épaules de Darwin. For 12 years, this tireless disseminator of knowledge took listeners on a journey ‘through research, culture and social life’, and we invite you to (re)discover the 600 episodes in podcast form. In all modesty, we would like to contribute to this epistemological approach by giving our professors the opportunity to tell us why and how leading figures in research and the economic world have influenced their careers.
From our very first exchanges, you emphasised Marc Bloch's “practical and intellectual” strength.
Yes, the figure of Marc Bloch (1) made a big impression on me very early on, as a student of history – ‘the science of people through time’ – not as an abstract reference, but as a model of intellectual practice and attitude towards the world.
A historian of societies in action, attentive to everyday practices, concrete mechanisms and the material frameworks of action, he showed that there was no contradiction between scientific rigour and taking a stand. This influence has greatly shaped my own research journey.
Which of this historian's works have been influential for you?
On the one hand, Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien (2), which is not a methodological manual in the strict sense, but a demanding reflection on what it means to observe the social world seriously. In it, Bloch advocates paying close attention to traces, actual practices, words and silences in sources, as well as a constant rejection of overly coherent retrospective reconstructions. This approach—starting from facts, mechanisms and actual practices rather than legitimising discourse—has a profound influence on the way I work on management and strategy practices.
L’Étrange Défaite (3), on the other hand, occupies a special place. This text, written in haste, is neither a personal account nor a political pamphlet. It is a cold analysis of a collective failure, based on the observation of routines, procedures, modes of reasoning and command structures. Bloch shows that the defeat of 1940 was not inevitable, but rather the result of organisations incapable of questioning themselves, trapped in obsolete cognitive and institutional frameworks. As a historian, witness and actor, he applies the same analytical standards to recent history as he does in his scholarly works.
This connection, in these two books but, of course, throughout his entire body of work, between analytical lucidity and personal involvement is, for me, a major point of reference.
How does Marc Bloch's approach resonate in your own research (4)?
Since my thesis and throughout my research, including my most recent work, my work has followed the logic outlined above: understanding how collective action is actually carried out, over time, under constraints, and rarely where organisations say it is decided. Over the years, this focus has expanded to include new subjects, without any methodological break: the professionalisation of strategy, strategic uses of the past, family businesses and emotions, organisations facing crises of legitimacy, etc.
In all of this work, I have sought to analyse the mechanisms, practices and routines that make action possible, but also, implicitly, those that produce blindness or inertia.
You also mention successive geopolitical shocks during the 2010s that further “confirmed” your convictions as a researcher...
Absolutely. The attacks in France in 2015 were the first shock. They made it impossible to naively believe that the world was peaceful, governed solely by economics or management. The brutal return of violence to European soil served as a reminder that organisations, both civil and military, are confronted with forms of conflict, asymmetry and disruption that cannot be dealt with through ordinary management alone.
For a researcher working on strategy and collective action, it became difficult to maintain a strictly academic position, as if these events belonged to a world other than the one I was studying.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a second, even more decisive turning point. It marked the explicit return of interstate warfare in Europe, the questioning of the strategic balances inherited from the end of the Cold War, and the brutal reaffirmation of issues of sovereignty, power, and industrial and military capacity.
This war highlights, in concrete terms, what my research has consistently shown over the long term: issues of strategy, organisation, planning and collective preparation are never abstract. They directly affect the ability of states and societies to cope with major crises.
… but also led to a more personal commitment?
Yes, it is in this context that my involvement in the army's operational reserve within a strategic studies centre should be understood. This is neither a symbolic gesture nor a late conversion. It is a matter of consistency. After devoting most of my work (4) to analysing the concrete mechanisms of collective action, the relationships between organisations, the state and strategy, and the often lasting effects of routines and systems, it seemed difficult to remain in the position of an outside observer.
The return of war in Europe and the renewed focus on issues of sovereignty necessitate a form of participation that is reasoned, proportionate to my skills, and compatible with my academic responsibilities... and my age.
As with Bloch, and in all modesty of course, there is no militarism or hero worship here. It is a certain idea of republican service: accepting that understanding organisations and strategy also entails a responsibility towards the collective. Understanding action, in certain circumstances, requires taking part in it.
This stance is not an abstract moral duty, but a rejection of comfortable neutrality. It extends, in another register, what my recent research has consistently highlighted: practices matter, mechanisms are binding, and organisational blindness comes at a high price when crises arise.
References
(1) Discover, among other things, the website developed by Panthéon Sorbonne University to mark Marc Bloch's entry into the Pantheon in 2026 - https://marcbloch.pantheonsorbonne.fr/
(2) Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l'histoire ou métier d'historien - 2e édition. Préface de Jacques Le Goff - https://www.dunod.com/histoire-geographie-et-sciences-politiques/apologie-pour-histoire-ou-metier-d-historien-ou-metier-d
(3) Marc Bloch, L'Etrange défaite - https://www.babelio.com/livres/Bloch-Letrange-defaite/748991
(4) Browse Ludovic Cailluet's Google Scholar page - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LXLfcM4AAAAJ&hl=fr
