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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Le recours au dialogue avec les parties prenantes dans l'exercice de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE) : proposition d'une typologie

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Since Freeman's work (1984), dialogue with stakeholders has become a central theme in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Bonnafous-Boucher & Pesqueux 2006; Brown & Dillard 2015; Brown et al. 2020).This dialogue is strongly encouraged by international standards (ISO 26000, GRI, IIRC, AA1000SES, OCDE Principles), which describe it as a tool to inform the decisions of organizations and to allow stakeholders to make their views heard.While the concept of dialogue is omnipresent in the literature, the use of dialogue as a management device is little questioned and documented in scientific studies. How is the dialogue organized by companies? What are the roles of stakeholders? Indeed, the types of dialogue and the roles of actors in decision-making processes are rarely addressed by authors in management. However, these elements are necessary to understand and report on the exercise of CSR. To fill this gap, this thesis aims to enrich the literature by highlighting the modalities of the deployment of dialogue with stakeholders in corporate social responsibility approaches.To do this, we mobilize dialogue theory, including work on dialogical learning (Freire 1972) and dialogical engagement (Thomson & Bebbington 2004, 2005; Bebbington et al. 2007a; b; Bebbington & Dillard 2007).A qualitative survey is conducted among 16 large French companies, from various sectors of activity, which are engaged in a dialogical process with their stakeholders. It is based on 20 semi-structured interviews (conducted with CSR managers and their external stakeholders) and 370 documents collected over a period of 5 years from 2015 to 2020 (including 170 social and integrated responsibility reports of about 200 pages each). This body of data was analyzed with the software NVIVO11 (content analysis) and IRAMUTEQ 0.7 alpha 2 (textual data analysis).The results of the research highlight a diversity of dialogue modalities and more or less important roles for stakeholders in the decision-making processes of companies. This results in a typology of dialogue (collaborative dialogue, free discussion, grouping of experts and satisfaction survey) and specific roles of stakeholders (advisory, expert and collaborator roles). These results also show that collaborative initiatives are strongly influenced by the commitment of the leader. Ultimately, they make it possible to draw theoretical and managerial lessons on the deployment of CSR.