Busi­ness and So­cial Respons­ibility in Fran­co­phone Coun­tries

Course content

The course focuses on how Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are being received, adapted, and institutionalized in different French-speaking countries' contexts. We adopt a Global North / Global South perspective by putting specifically into conversation a Western context (i.e.metropolitan and ultramarine France) and a North-African one (i.e. Morocco) - though the examples we will study go beyond these two national contexts. The conversation between different French-speaking contexts aims to illustrate how history, traditions, and institutions contribute to enabling and constraining how business actors’ sensemaking. 

The ideal of socially responsible business will be used as a lens for comparing institutional particularities and diversities as well as different groups of business actors and their identities.

Particular attention will be paid to the various and conflicting businesses (MNCs, SME, Social and solidarity economy organizations i.e. civil society organizations, governments, and sectoral interests) and stakeholders’ interests when business and social responsibility acquire a sense in francophone countries. We will study how the different dimensions of sustainability i.e. economic, environmental, and social are articulated. The course uses problem-based and case-study learning in different sectors (e.g car constructors, fast fashion, agriculture, tourism, mining industries). We will explore a diversity of conceptual and theoretical frameworks to analyse CSR initiatives and strategies, review its relationship with historical concepts such as paternalism or philantropy and study the legal framework for CSR and how soft law and hard law articulate.

We will place responsibility in the globalization context discussing how it can be implemented through a global supply chain and discussing it at different levels. We will use different theoretical perspectives to understand real cases, such as the decoupling between firms' discourses and practices, green, pink, or social washing.