Three partners from PwC combined their complementary and interconnected expertise on the undoubtedly sensitive topics of sustainable development and management transformation to offer us an extremely successful work.
In addition to CSR, By Emilie Bobin, Sylvain Lambert and Frédéric Petitbon, Vuibert, 2023.
This work has two parts for this purpose. The first part entitled: A society facing profound physical and social changes asks itself what its new role should be. To this end, various chapters argumentatively highlight the imperative need for a paradigm shift by transitioning to a new governance model. This is in view of the objective scientific reality, which has particularly significant impacts, whether it is a large-scale disruption of the climate and the threat to biological diversity, but also a legitimately increasingly demanding social demand, especially from the younger generations. THE The Green Deal proposed by the European Commission three years ago may prove promising in this regard. Which leads the authors to rightly believe that “the very notion of performance is being redefined at the same time as society itself is redefining its role in relation to society”.
The second part, which is supposed to be offensive and constructive, therefore presents six keys to building the society of the future. In between, we note in particular the need to adapt or rework the economic model. This will in particular lead to the clarification and, above all, to a more frequent rediscovery of the company’s reason for being in such a way as to “open the field of possibilities in the logic of impact and to think “broadly” in order to pull the strings together.” both upstream of the value chain (…) and downstream.” Likewise, we note the desire to begin this construction of a complete REE by starting “from the top”, including managers and boards of directors. In addition, the authors emphasize the need to “sustainably anchor the spirit of full CSR throughout the company” by applying and bringing it to the various activities, professions and teams of the company, relying on appropriate methods and tools. Finally, in a logical and consistent way, these three partners encourage us to redefine and enrich the concept of performance, which is too often limited to accounting and financial indicators, thus focusing the concept of “total performance” on a new triptych: results , prospects and impacts. This will necessarily lead to a conflation of economic performance and social utility.
Here is a particularly welcome, well-founded and persuasive work on a topic that is set to become more central than ever, and we highly recommend reading it.