Isabelle Pignatel

Lessons to be learned: French top accounting journals' contribution to climate change

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the contribution made to climate change issues by the elite French accounting journals of La Revue Francophone de Comptabilite and Comptabilite, Controle, Audit, for the period 2000‐2005.Design/methodology/approach – The climate change contributions made by top French to top Anglo‐Saxon journals are compared.Findings – While Anglo Saxon elite journals place the natural environment outside the fold of the elite accounting academia, French elite accounting organs infuse climate change issues with subtle motives and meanings, providing symbolic power to a plethora of communicators who want to show that accounting can respond to the global environmental risks caused by human problems.Originality/value – Stress is placed on the fact that Anglo‐Saxon accounting academics approve and endorse the present system of accounting journal ranking. It does not rank Frances top journals very highly and makes no room for discourses outside the mainstream.

The Interconnectivity of an Environmental Disclosure Index in a CAC-40 Context: A Research Note

Extending Cormier and Magnans (2003) study of French environmental reporting, this study investigates the interconnectivity of their dependent variable index of natural environmental disclosures of French CAC-40 companies for the year-ending 2005, through a theory of environmental interconnectivity, using a correlation coefficient analysis of the six broad components of the index. Results show that, while overall, CAC-40 companies disclose 48% of Cormier and Magnans unweighted environmental disclosure list, it is the very high correlations between the broad disclosed components of the index that underlies the interconnectivity of environmental issues by French companies. Whilst one might expect some interconnectivity between disclosed components of an index, the very high correlations amongst the correlations suggests that those French companies that are prepared to disclose, are prepared to interlock one environment issue with another.

La diffusion du concept de RSE dans les firmes industrielles : l'émergence de nouveaux paradigmes managériaux

Ces travaux ont pour objectif d’approfondir les connaissances sur les phenomenes induits, au sein des firmes industrielles, par les demarches en faveur du developpement durable. Les pressions dues a l’environnement et l’evolution des strategies en lien avec les parties prenantes font progressivement emerger une nouvelle representation de la firme.Notre recherche permet d’expliciter les changements en matiere de pratiques manageriales et d’observer les effets produits sur la performance de trois grandes entreprises. Nous constatons que les strategies explicites conduites en faveur du developpement durable peuvent avoir des impacts positifs a court terme sur la performance.