Corporate Social Responsibility, a meta-embeddedment of firms : an analysis of the case of India ; La Responsabilité Sociale d'Entreprise, un méta-encastrement des firmes : une analyse du cas indien

Abstract

The PhD-thesis offers an original interpretation of the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a meta-embeddedment of firms. This interpretation is grounded in a multi-level empirical investigation of the Indian case. The first part begins with the presentation of an analytical framework, which uses the Polanyian notions of embeddedment and disembeddedment of the economic system to shed light on the relationships between firms and their social environment. The framework is subsequently deployed in a macrosociological study of the firm-society relationship in India. Three distinct configurations emerge. A form of "sociocultural" embeddedment of firms predominates from the 1860s to 1947. It gives way to a political and bureaucratic form of embeddedment, in a context of mixed economy (1948-1979). Contemporary India is experiencing a movement of disembeddedment of firms. This movement provokes the rise of a counter-movement of reembeddedment of firms, in which social movements play a central role. A constellation of actors produce CSR in response to this coupling between movements of disembeddedment and reembeddedment. The second part presents three monographs on cement plants operated or promoted by Lafarge India, which offer detailed observations of the conditions of emergence of the phenomenon of CSR. Combining a critical-realist approach and the sociology of Niklas Luhmann, a third part shows how CSR produces a meta-embeddedment of firms, which enables them to process the economic risks of the disembeddedment/reembeddedment coupling, both at an organizational level and at the systemic level of "global governance". ; La thèse propose une interprétation originale du phénomène de la responsabilité sociale d'entreprise (RSE) comme un méta-encastrement des firmes. Cette interprétation est élaborée à la lumière d'une investigation multi-niveaux du cas indien. La première partie débute par l'exposition d'un cadre d'analyse des rapports entre les firmes et leur environnement social, construit autour des ...