Les impacts de la technologie RFID et du réseau EPC sur la gestion de la chaîne d'approvisionnement : le cas de l'industrie du commerce de détail

«RÉSUMÉ» : Définie comme une technologie sans-fil d’identification et de collecte automatique des données, la technologie d’identification par radiofréquence (RFID) est en train d’émerger comme un nouveau système inter-organisationnel, qui va profondément transformer les processus et pratiques d’affaires de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Toutefois, l’importance de la co-adoption de la technologie RFID et du réseau EPC dans la chaîne d’approvisionnement a jusqu’à présent reçu peu d’attention dans la littérature et très peu d’études empiriques ont été menées sur la valeur et les impacts de cette co-adoption de la RFID et du réseau EPC dans un contexte de chaîne d’approvisionnement. Cette recherche représente un premier effort visant à combler cette lacune dans la littérature sur ces questions spécifiques. Notre étude s’appuie sur la revue de littérature existante sur la technologie RFID et le réseau EPC, la théorie de la gestion de l’innovation, la gestion de la chaîne et les systèmes inter-organisationnels pour répondre aux questions de recherche suivantes : (i) Que comprend précisément la technologie RFID?; (ii) Quelle est l’infrastructure minimale que requiert cette technologie?; (iii) Quel lien existe-t-il entre la technologie RFID et le réseau EPC?; (iv) Quel rôle pourrait jouer un laboratoire universitaire dans le processus d’adoption de la technologie RFID et du réseau EPC?; (v) Quels sont les impacts de la technologie RFID et du réseau EPC sur les processus d’affaires et les flux d’informations intra- et inter-organisationnels, sur la main-d’œuvre, et sur les modèles d’affaires; (vi) Quelles sont les stratégies à mettre en œuvre pour, d’une part, guider l’élaboration et la mise en œuvre des divers scénarios d’adoption intégrant la technologie RFID et le réseau EPC et, d’autre part, faciliter la communication entre les différents acteurs impliqués dans le processus d’identification des modèles d’affaires appropriés et les infrastructures technologiques pouvant supporter l’adoption d’un scenario intégrant de ces technologies?»----------«ABSTRACT : Defined as a wireless automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technology, the Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is emerging as an innovative inter-organizational system (IOS) that will profoundly transform the supply chain business processes and practices. However, the importance of the co-adoption of RFID and the EPC network within the supply chain has so far received insignificant attention in the literature and very few empirical studies have been conducted on the value and impacts of the co-adoption of RFID and EPC network in a supply chain context. This research represents an initial effort towards bridging the existing knowledge gap on these specific issues. Our study draws from the literature review on the RFID technology and the EPC network, the innovation management theory, the supply chain management and the inter-organizational systems to examine the following research questions : (i) What precisely does the RFID infrastructure include?; (ii) What is the link between the RFID technology and the EPC network? (iii) What role could play a university-based laboratory in the adoption process of the RFID technology and the EPC network?; (iv) What are the impacts of the RFID technology and the EPC network on intra-organizational and inter-organizational business processes and information flows, on the workforce, and on the existing business models; (v) What strategies should be implemented in order to, first, guide the development and the implementation of various adoption scenarios integrating the RFID technology and the EPC network, and, secondly, facilitate communication between the different stakeholders involved in the process of identifying the appropriate business models and technological infrastructure supporting the adoption of an optimal scenario integrating these technologies?

Description and Meaning in Three Novels by Gustave Flaubert.

This study focuses on the problematic of description and meaning in literature, based on three master-works by Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary, Salammbo, and L\u27Education sentimentale. Description generally tends to create digressions and gratuitous accumulations that can break the narrative development. However, in the classical realist text descriptive details are to represent a global image and be available to a possible interpretive recuperation which can be mimetic and establish the basic story line, or symbolic, that is, primarily connoting the themes of the novel or the characters\u27 feelings. Using Flaubert\u27s works as examples, this study analyzes the constant tensions of these two tendencies of literary description. Contrary to normative, thematic, or structuralist criticism, and different from the common interpretation which integrates descriptive passages into the finality of narrative in Balzac\u27s novels, this study emphasizes how Flaubert\u27s images waver between the possibility of a meaning which is functional to the narrative continuity, and a certain resistance to interpretation which anticipate the techniques of the modern self-referential novel. On the one hand, in the passages analyzed in this study of three novels, adequate signs offer a basis for mimetic or symbolic interpretation; on the other hand, a more critical reading reveals the presence of stylistic elements which disrupt a thematic or realist integration. Examples include excess of detail; fluid and vague contours; geometric and exotic landscapes; petrifying features, such as colors or adjectives, which stop the narrative temporal progression; disorder of space; excessive literariness; confusion of forms; insistence on the proliferation of the ornamental to the detriment of the human traits; and accumulations of objects which exceed the limits of verisimilitude and lead to the uninterpretable. Therefore, this study indicates that language continuously fails to sustain a stable semiology: Flaubert\u27s literary work is subjected to various possibilities of meaning and non-meaning which disorient the reader. In these three novels, his style exhibits the tensions of the transition from the readable novel to the self-referential text, which expresses only the means of its own fabrication. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)