An Exploratory Analysis of the Voluntary Responsibility Discourse in Corporate Sector: The Case of France

Abstract

Sustainability and CSR have become an integral part of business media across the continents. Despite the considerable amount of research done in this domain, CSR remains so far, a field of study within the broader discipline of Management. It is often defined as an ideology that pursues to attain business objectives by operating in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way whilst balancing the interests of diverse stakeholders. Thus identifying the key stakeholders and engaging with them in transparent and lucid is crucial to the long-term viability of business. A Corporate disclosure is often considered as a method by which organizations can interact with their stakeholders and thereby influence their perceptions. However, unlike financial disclosures, which are based on uniform standards, social and environmental disclosures vary within regions, countries and industries. In this present piece of work we endeavor to explore the patterns of social disclosures within the boundaries of political entity i.e. France. We discover that French companies focus on employees and environment respectively as the most important stakeholders in CSR discourse. A number of differences have been observed between this work and the literature. We argue that socio-political disparities, in part, account for these differences and therefore a more holistic approach by combing political economy theory with stakeholder and legitimacy theory should give a better approximation of CSR discourse dynamics.