Corporate social responsibility

► Full Reference: P. Deumier, « Chartes et codes de conduite des entreprises : les degrés de normativité des engagements éthiques » (Corporate Charters and Codes of Conduct: The Degrees of Normativity of Ethical Commitments), Revue trimestrielle de droit civil (RTD civ.), 2009, pp. 77-80. - ► Summary: the author starts from the circular of the French Directorate General for Labour of 19 November 2008 on ethical charters, whistleblowing schemes and internal rules. She shows that, behind ethical titles and an appearance of soft law, corporate codes of conduct mix statements of values with rules of conduct, and proposes to analyse them according to their normative content: codes that commit to nothing; codes that commit to nothing more than what the law already requires – which nevertheless spread knowledge of the law close to those concerned and may turn the company into a private legislator towards its suppliers and subcontractors; and codes that express a genuine normative power, subject to review by the courts. She concludes that the freedom to make ethical commitments does not allow a company to display commitments it does not keep. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.

► Full Reference: Y. Queinnec, « La clause RSE, levier incontournable de vigilance » (The CSR Clause, an Essential Lever of Vigilance), Revue Lamy droit des affaires, no. 139, July 2018.

► Full Reference: K. Parella, “Contractual Stakeholderism”, Boston University Law Review, vol. 102, no. 3, 2022, pp. 865-924. - ► Summary: starting from the Business Roundtable’s 2019 commitment to all stakeholders, the author proposes “contractual stakeholderism”. She argues for moving from a benefits-based justification of stakeholder protection to a harms-based approach focused on the risks that corporate activity creates for stakeholders, identifying five dimensions of inequality that expose them. Since many of these harms arise from corporate contracting choices, this protection can be implemented through the negotiation, drafting and performance of contracts. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.

► Full reference: L. Knöpfel, « Une perspective anthropologique sur les pratiques de responsabilité des entreprises dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales » (An Anthropological Perspective on Corporate Responsibility Practices in Global Value Chains), Revue internationale de droit économique, 2021/4, vol. XXXV, pp. 45-67. - ► Summary: the author adopts a legal anthropology perspective on the governance of mining companies in global value chains, taking the reader into the relationships between a primary-sector company and local communities at the “resource frontier” in El Cesar, northern Colombia. After a methodological intervention on research into responsibility in value chains, she studies a particular corporate responsibility practice, social programmes, through corporate gifts and the social licence to operate, relations of dependence and detachment between the company and the communities, and the compensatory function of these programmes. She argues that social programmes sustain a cycle of reciprocity through which the company forges close and entangled relationships with the communities and assumes far-reaching responsibilities for their economic and social well-being. This understanding finds a legal counterpart in contractual obligations and third-party beneficiary rights: contract law could and should therefore play a central role in regulating global value chains, in the primary sector and beyond. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.