Cet article analyse la responsabilité sociale des entreprises comme un processus d’institutionnalisation en cours. Nous appréhendons la RSE comme constitutive de la concurrence inter-entreprises par la recherche d’avantages comparatifs. Le rapport salarial ne semble pas être transformé par la RSE, qui apparaît comme une tentative de légitimation de nature politique par les entreprises du nouveau rapport de force post-fordien. Elle révèle des confrontations dans et hors de l’entreprise, et fait ressortir de nouvelles relations entre managers, actionnaires et salariés.
Abstract:Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was long associated with the ethics of company heads but now falls within an institutional process whereby practices give rise to rules which in turn modify company actions. CSR has spread as a result of social demand for a more ecological society, but it also constitutes a response to the crisis of shareholder governance. Drawing on the notion of ‘conception of control’ set out by Neil Fligstein (1990), we argue that CSR has given rise to a new ‘conception of control’, which we term ‘shareholder–CSR compatible’. Such a conception reflects how governance changes when environmental and societal responsibilities are combined with responsibility to shareholders. Shareholder value is still central within the enterprise, but top managers must now assume the position of mediators between these two imperatives.
International audienceWe argue that corporate social responsibility depends on two distinct stylized facts concerning régulation and power. The first\textemdashinstitutional CSR\textemdashis institutional in nature, the other\textemdashstrategic CSR\textemdashis economic and productive. The former permits and stabilizes the latter, which in turn gives rise to political compromises structuring institutional mechanisms. CSR strategies and institutions correspond to a private, oligopolistic régulation which shows no signs of being able to pursue a sustainable development regime
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.