Tribune. It has now been two years since the Pacte law was promulgated. This legislative text carrying a great ambition, that of rethinking the place of companies in society, has established a new legal framework. “Whose importance we perhaps do not yet measure”. This recognizes that the management of any business must be conducted “In its social interest, taking into account the social and environmental issues of its activity”.
For the most voluntary among them, it is even given, through the raison d’être and the status of a company with a mission, the possibility of acquiring new tools allowing them to act with a greater social and environmental impact. Here we find the “Three stages of the rocket” a new corporate social responsibility (CSR), according to the formula of Antoine Foucher, chief of staff of the Minister of Labor at the time of the adoption of the law.
If these developments are in line with the expectations of citizens, two out of three French people believing that companies have the power to improve the world in which we live, they are however very little identified by the general public. For example, only 25% of French people know this new concept of the “raison d’être” of companies. This notoriety deficit can and must be filled by the companies themselves, and in particular by their leaders who often carry this fight and have even become, for some, real. “Activists”, convinced that the definition of the raison d’être will bring the French closer to the company.
The latest avatar of “social” and “greenwashing”
This is all the more crucial since in addition to ignorance, a suspicion of insincerity weighs on this type of approach within public opinion – 74% of French people believe that companies want to benefit from it on their own. picture. The raison d’être would then be, for the most skeptical, only the last avatar of the socialwashing and greenwashing.
Three conditions seem to me to have to be met for this work to be effective.
First of all, the formulation of its definition must be memorable and suitable for as many people as possible. For the time being, it appears that for many companies, the raison d’être is materialized by substantial and inaccessible texts, aimed mainly at internal stakeholders or external partners. Companies must therefore make an effort to be readable so that their intentions, sometimes complex, find concrete variations intended for the general public.
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