Frédérique Déjean

Measuring the Unmeasured: An Institutional Entrepreneur Strategy in an Emerging Industry

The organizational literature on emerging industries has emphasized the need for institutional entrepreneurs - actors who give the new activity legitimacy and determine its patterns of behaviour. However, little empirical research has been carried out on the strategies that institutional entrepreneurs employ in order to achieve legitimacy for their activity. In this article, we suggest that an institutional entrepreneur can use the development of measurement tools as a strategy to develop its own legitimacy and power. By looking at a French entrepreneurial company’s development of tools to measure corporate social performance, we analyse how measurement tools influence the legitimacy of an industry and the systemic power within it. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for research into measurement tools in the areas of management or business and society.

Environmental Disclosure and the Cost of Equity: The French Case

What is the impact of voluntary corporate environmental disclosures on the cost of equity? The present study will attempt to answer this question. The empirical research is based on companies listed in the French SBF 120 stock market index. In 2006, most of these companies devoted a section of their annual report to environmental actions, yet fewer than 20% of them actually published a separate report dedicated to the issue of sustainable development. Regardless of the selected medium, the environmental topics receiving the most attention in corporate reporting are pollution, natural resources and recycling. The determinants associated with environmental disclosure are: company size, financial leverage, and the number of financial analysts monitoring company stock. This study does not lead to concluding that companies disclosing environmental information necessarily lower the cost of equity.

Corporate social disclosure in the franchising sector: insights from french franchisors' websites

This paper explores corporate social responsibility () within the franchising sector. More specifically, using regulation theory, stakeholder–agency theory, transaction cost analysis, and literature on plural form, along with an empirical study conducted on the franchising sector in the French market, we find significant and positive relationships between chain size and the extent of corporate social disclosure () on franchisors’ websites and between the percentage of company‐owned units within the chain and the extent of on franchisors’ websites. Moreover, though findings reveal that 86.03 percent of the 136 sampled franchisors communicate about at least one of their activities on their websites, differences in terms of highlighted categories (e.g., environment, human resources, and products) and the extent of available information exist.

Drivers of socially responsible investment in the French financial market

In France, a religious congregation created the first ethical fund in 1983. By the end of the 1980s, only two ethical funds were operating. During the second half of the 1990s, the number of SRI funds rose rapidly – only 7 were available in 1997, by December 2001 this number had jumped to 42 and then to 137 by the end of 2007. In 2010, almost 300 SR funds were available. During the period from end of 2001 to end of 2010, the percentage of total French mutual fund capitalization represented by SRI funds climbed from 0.12% to nearly 1% (www.novethic.fr). Despite the fact that this total amount remains modest, still all retail networks are now offering such funds.