Projects, chairs and agreements

Projects

The Horizon project CO4HUB aims to design scalable ULH solutions that overcome spatial, economic, and competitive constraints. In a context of 15-minutes city, the project addresses the main barriers to the development of city logistics systems (mainly related to space availability, willingness to pay and reluctancy of stakeholders to change) by combining pilots, simulations, and innovative governance and business models.

More specifically, CO4HUB will develop innovative ULH solutions across three core areas:

Organizational setups of the transport system,
Business models that create compelling sustainable value combining multiple services,
Public policies, regulations and incentives that encourage competitors to consolidate shipments.

Solutions will be co-designed, refined, and validated with stakeholders through six real-world pilots across four countries. Complementary simulations will assess the transferability and scalability of ULH concepts under different urban conditions. All interventions will integrate novel physical and digital innovations, ensuring measurable impacts on traffic reduction, emissions, and urban livability. By combining practical experimentation with systemic analysis, CO4HUB will deliver actionable, scalable solutions for sustainable urban logistics. It involves 23 partners from 4 countries, in a mix of academic, practitioner and public policy stakeholders: Austria, Finland, France and Sweden. Excelia is in charge of data production and analysis of the entire consortium, both quantitative and qualitative.

The Horizon project SCOT-DT explores a new approach to supporting sustainable and community-centered development in coastal tourism destinations by combining advanced digital technologies with inclusive governance principles. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, it seeks to create a flexible decision-support framework that enhances environmental awareness, cultural sensitivity, and stakeholder collaboration.

Tested across diverse European coastal regions, the project aims to offer practical tools that help local actors balance tourism growth with long-term ecological and socio-cultural well-being, ultimately contributing to more resilient and responsible blue tourism practices.
With a dedicated budget of €235k, Excelia collaborates with 5 international partners across France, Poland, Romania, and Turkey to co-design, test, and validate tools such as a Heritage Vitality Index, a Cultural Conflict Risk Index, and blockchain-based governance mechanisms. Excelia is the project leader of the consortium.

Chairs

Excelia Business School started several conversations with businesses and other organisations located in its zones of influence (Nouvelle-Aquitaine; Centre-Val de Loire; Île de France) concerning sustainability and other global challenges faced by business and society. The School has thus created several chairs or agreements dedicated to these issues, determining areas of joint research and collaboration and detailing the obligations and expectations of each side; the objective being the production of research outputs that can serve both academia and the world of practice.

The following are the recent research chairs that have been created by Excelia Business School in partnership with business organisations:

Fleury Michon: Chair : « Comptabilité élargie et finance durable » . Fleury Michon is a local agri-food business. The Extended Accounting & Sustainable Finance Chair focusses on tools for managing responsible approaches, management control, extra-financial reporting, and socio-environmental accounting. The purpose of the sponsorship agreement signed with Fleury Michon is to implement an accounting information system at one of the Group’s industrial sites that will enable it to report on its overall performance.
Hautier: Chair "Ingéniérie de la Responsabilité Sociétale". The Hautier Group is a transport company based in La Rochelle. Formalisation of the group's corporate social responsibility approach with the support of researchers from the School
SocialCoBizz: Socialcobizz is committed to creating a fully-fledged research programme with an academic partner focused on transition and alliances. This R&D programme has several objectives: to identify the obstacles and levers that enable partnerships to promote the transition to a more ecological and inclusive society; to diagnose the issues faced by partnership stakeholders at different levels (site, region, sector); and to propose recommendations for creating new transformative partnerships.
Cyclad: The Cyclad joint association has been awarded the Circular Economy Territory label. It is a public waste management service that brings together seven inter-municipal authorities in Charente-Maritime. Researchers are involved in this partnership to develop academic research on the themes of entrepreneurship and the circular economy.
3F IAA (Immobilière Atlantic Aménagement) - Niort: Part of the 3F Group, Immobilière Atlantic Aménagement manages, renovates and develops social housing in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region. The agreement covers joint research collaboration between businesses and research institutions and encompasses the topics of agility, process digitalisation, innovation and management.

Agreements

Charentes Tourisme

Excelia Business School and Charentes Tourisme (a leading destination management organisation that has become a mission-driven association) have signed an ambitious research agreement dedicated to developing an innovative methodology for assessing and managing balanced tourism. Led by the Institute for Social Responsibility through Innovation (IRSI) and the Tourism Management Institute (TMI) at Excelia, this partnership combines academic expertise with strong regional roots to better understand, measure and support the transition of the Charentes territories towards sustainable, responsible and inclusive tourism.

The research programme aims to:

Develop a scientific tool for measuring balanced tourism
- Design of a multi-indicator dashboard, incorporating economic, social, societal and environmental data.
- Creation of a composite index (“Touriscore”), based on a transparent and scientifically validated algorithm.
- Progressive implementation across several pilot territories (rural, urban, island contexts).
Implement an innovative territorial dialogue approach
- Facilitation of collaborative workshops involving residents, visitors, operators, local authorities and socio-economic stakeholders.
- Co-construction of a balanced tourism diagnosis, identification of improvement areas and development opportunities.
- Development of an operational action guide to support local stakeholders.
Produce valuable and transferable outputs
- Academic publications, conferences, teaching case studies and professional opinion pieces.
- Development of a standard social acceptability report for the Charentes territories.
- A model with potential for wider implementation.

Scientific team involved

The agreement is led by a multidisciplinary Excelia team, bringing together expertise in sustainable tourism, data analysis, CSR and social innovation.

Dimbi Ramonjy, Associate Professor in Strategy and CSR, member of IRSI, scientific lead of the project.
Cécile Ezvan, Associate Professor, Director of IRSI, expert in ethical and responsible approaches; member of the strategic and scientific committees.
Luc Béal, Associate Professor, Director of TMI, expert in tourism management and tourism data analysis.
Marine L’Hostis, Associate Professor, expert in sustainable tourism (with Marie-Noëlle Rimaud as deputy).