The Role of CSR in the Governance of the "New firm": an Empirical Study of the French Telecommunications Industry

Cécile Cézanne (1) , Marianne Rubinstein (1)

1 CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord

The aim of this paper is to propose an instrumental analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR). After underlining the corporate governance issues raised by the "new firm", which is vertically disintegrated and intensive in specific human capital, we argue that CSR can be useful as a means to regulate power relationships between key productive partners of the firm. Based on the analysis of official reports and interviews of the four major French operators of telecommunications, we show that CSR is voluntarily used by firms to maintain long-term wealth-creative employment and subcontracting relationships, through the deployment of formal and informal mechanisms.

Mots clés: human capital; boundaries of the firm; corporate governance; corporate social responsibility; French telecommunications industry

Domaines: Economies et finances

Cécile Cézanne, Marianne Rubinstein. The Role of CSR in the Governance of the "New firm": an Empirical Study of the French Telecommunications Industry. 2011. ⟨hal-00628726⟩