Responsabilit� soci�tale et d�veloppement durable

Scholars have studied the various pressures that companies face related to socially responsible behavior when stakeholders know the particular social issues under consideration. Many have examined social responsibility in the context of environmental responsibility and the general approaches companies take regarding environmental management. The issue of currently unregulated, but potentially hazardous, chemicals in consumer products is not well understood by the general public, but a number of proactive consumer product companies have voluntarily adopted strategies to minimize use of such chemicals. These companies are exceeding regulatory requirements by restricting from their products chemicals that could harm human or environmental health, despite the fact that these actions are costly. They do not usually advertise the details of their strategies to end consumers. This article uses interviews with senior environmental directors of 20 multinational consumer product companies to investigate why these companies engage in voluntary chemicals management. The authors conclude that the most significant reasons are to achieve a competitive advantage and stay ahead of regulations, manage relationships and maintain legitimacy with stakeholders, and put managerial values into practice. Many of the characteristics related to the case of chemicals management are extendable to other areas of stakeholder management in which risks to stakeholders are either unknown or poorly understood.

This exploratory study investigates firms’ implementation of a new corporate governance code in Mauritius, a developing economy. The authors rely on annual report disclosures during a four-year period (2004-2007). The authors analyze the level of corporate engagement with the code’s requirements, including corporate social responsibility initiatives, relative to a 2004 (when the code was enacted) benchmark over the three subsequent years. The study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it provides much needed evidence of longitudinal implementation within developing economies that exhibit, or have started to exhibit, a combination of ownership and control features found in more advanced economies and characterized in the literature as an "emerging governance" model. Second, the authors develop a more comprehensive assessment of implementation using a scoring system that combines trichotomous weighting of each governance component (as 1, 3, or 5) and trichotomous rating of implementation of each component (as 0, 0.5, or 1). The authors argue that this system is superior to the un-weighted, dichotomous approach typically used in the literature. The analysis of weighted assessment scores for reveals a significant implementation of the code initially after 2004; but implementation began to level off by 2007 well below maximum assignable scores. Detailed requirements regarding directors’ appraisal and training, remuneration policies and remuneration information appear to be ignored by companies through 2007. A correlation analysis of the corporate governance scores and firm-based measures (level and changes) shows that the association between these different variables fluctuates significantly over the implementation window.