André Sobczak

Corporate social responsibility in France: A mix of national traditions and international influences

This article explores the dynamics of the discourse and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in France to illustrate the interplay between endogenous and exogenous factors in the development of CSR in a country. It shows how the cultural, socioeconomic, and legal traditions influence the way ideas are raised, the kinds of questions considered relevant, and the sorts of solutions conceived as desirable and possible. Furthermore, the article traces how expectations and practices evolve as a result of various social and economic factors within a country and, increasingly, as a result of global influences such as the international academic discourse, the international practices of multinational companies, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions, and initiatives of supranational organizations. The article closes with reflections about what can be learned from the French experience with CSR and how to stimulate such cross-border learning.

Beyond CSR: Organizational learning for global responsibility

This contribution argues that it is time to move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) to ‘global responsibility.’ As long as the field retains its old label, the learning agenda for organisations will be too narrow to address the full range of challenges for a sustainable world. It sets too small a stage, invites too few actors to participate and restricts the types of roles they can play. Global responsibility reframes the way issues are defined and the paths along which solutions may be found. After building the argument for the term, the contribution draws on research about organisational learning to identify the kinds of learning that organisations must become skilled at in order to tackle global responsibility. It then illustrates learning processes in a co-operative bank and an international non-governmental association, a multinational corporation, and a multi stakeholder platform created by the United Nations. These cases show how organisations are combining various types of learning and using physical and virtual learning spaces to generate knowledge for action. The contribution concludes by discussing how to increase the number of organisations engaging in such global responsibility and how to speed up their learning. To this end, lessons are drawn from experiences with the diffusion of voluntary and mandatory approaches to corporate social reporting over the past forty years.

We Are the Champions: Organizational Learning and Change for Responsible Management Education

As the number of institutions adopting the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative grows, there is an overhanging risk that many of them will merely add “responsibility” as a topic to the existing curriculum. The authors contend that a serious reading of PRME should instead entail thinking in terms of a gradual transformation of management education. Such a serious reading poses a number of organizational learning (and unlearning) challenges. By relying on their own experiences at two PRME signatory business schools in France and Finland, they describe how faculty champions may face these challenges in implementing PRME, and specifically how they may overcome strategic, structural, and cultural barriers. The authors particularly emphasize political challenges at every level and the role of champions inducing reflexivity in overcoming some of the barriers. They argue that although faculty champions are not the most powerful actors within the business school, they are still well positioned to inspire and instill the needed transformation of management education. They conclude that faculty champions need to creatively “make do” within the constraints imposed by their organizational context.

Client, employer and employee: Mapping a complex triangulation

Many studies in the fields of law, sociology and management point to the transformation of subordination in the employment relationship. This is often explained by the triangulation of the traditionally bilateral employment relation between employer and employees by the involvement of clients or their representatives in the operational and organizational conditions of work. Such studies rarely distinguish between the various types of clients, nor between the reality and rhetoric of their role and influence. Our objective is to propose a classification of the triangular situations between employer, employees and clients based on the concept of power and to analyse the impacts of clients on conditions of work and employment relations.

Codes of conduct in subcontracting networks: a labour law perspective

In the past ten years, many European companies organised into subcontracting networks have decided to adopt codes of conduct to regulate labour relations and to ensure the respect of fundamental social rights. This paper first determines the context and the issues to be addressed by codes of conduct within networks of companies, and second analyses the terms under which they can be implemented. The paper argues that codes of conduct can complement the standards developed by States, the European Union or the social partners, but that steps should be taken in order to avoid that these texts replace the existing labour law.

Culturally Embedded Organizational Learning for Global Responsibility

This article proposes a multilevel model of Global Responsibility as a culturally embedded organizational learning process. The model enables an analysis of the way culture influences how responsibilities are defined and distributed in a culture at a given point in time, and how organizations learn to address new responsibilities in new ways when the context changes. The model starts at the organizational level and zooms in on the individual level as well as outward to the local, national, and international levels. The case of a French multinational company subsidiary in Brazil illustrates how the model can be used to show the relative relevance of the different sources of cultural influences on key stages in organizational learning processes. The authors include the arts as an inherent dimension of culture that tends to be overlooked in the management literature, and the case illustrates how the arts can play a role in organizational learning for Global Responsibility.

The Role of UN Principles for Responsible Management Education in Stimulating Organizational Learning for Global Responsibility Within Business Schools An Interview With Jonas Haertle

In recent years, The United Nations (UN)-backed Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) has emerged as a learning platform for business schools to encourage co-operation at teaching, research, and institutional level with other business schools across the world to deal with global responsibility issues at economic, social, and environmental level. In this context, we interview Jonas Haertle, the current head of the UN PRME, to understand how this initiative may stimulate organizational learning for global responsibility within business schools. We base this interview on a conceptual model that highlights the different learning steps to become a responsible organization and the influence of internal and external factors on this learning process. Jonas underlines that beyond the necessary commitment of the dean and of faculty members, international academic networks may contribute to accelerate the development of responsible management education.

Ensuring the effective implementation of transnational company agreements

Over the past decade, a number of European companies have negotiated transnational company agreements. These agreements may help improve labour standards in the subsidiaries, and even more for those employed by subcontractors or suppliers. They may also encourage social dialogue at these levels. However, given their uncertain legal status, how it is possible to ensure their effective implementation throughout the company’s subsidiaries? What matters is less the legal status of the transnational collective agreement than the active involvement of the various actors involved in the process. The role of the signatories to the agreement is of course crucial, but its effective implementation also requires the commitment of local managements and workers’ representatives. This article draws on discussions and interviews with managers and worker representatives directly involved in the implementation of transnational company agreements, and identifies ways to encourage this kind of commitment.