Écologisation de la gouvernance d’entreprise : vers un renouvellement de la problématique ?

The ambition to review corporate governance in order to make it more sustainable has met with much resistance. However, there are good reasons to think that the debate will, over the coming years, focus on the best way to achieve a sustainable corporate governance system, while this objective in itself will become consensual. The purpose of this article is to highlight two phenomena that could set the stage for new approaches on how best to set up sustainable corporate governance frameworks. The first confirms a new setup among potential decision-makers: while governments? action seems rather limited, the role of judges is increasing and corporations themselves are developing numerous initiatives. The second phenomenon invites us to adopt a different perspective and to think of the solutions, no longer in terms of the firm and its governance, but in terms of the risks to be managed and controlled. Since these risks are global, two avenues present themselves, which could be combined. The first approach is rooted in the liberal tradition, and it tends to favor governments? regulations of these risks at the international, regional, and national level. This approach has received sharp criticism, grounded in the fact that the hypotheses it relied on were disproved by facts. The other approach is illustrated by initiatives such as the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety: it consists of establishing multi-stakeholder governance frameworks targeted at dealing with the risks at hand. This approach is also illustrated by the proposition to set up in France sectoral codes of conduct adopted by corporations under the supervision of their sectoral regulating agency and targeted at reducing the environmental impacts of the entire sector. In this same vein, the framework agreements concluded between European social partners could be extended to corporate social responsibility issues, and thus also include environmental stakes. This would require a revision of existing legal provisions, but above all the organization and structuring of real ?trade union? forces able to address ecological issues.