— 2018

CR3+ Conference in Nantes

As part of a collaboration with Hanken School of Economics (Finland), ISAE/FGV (Brazil), and La Trobe Business School (Australia), Audencia organised the sixth CR3+ conference on the following theme: “Navigating the Plural Voices of Corporate Responsibility”. The conference, attended by 52 participants, was held on 12 and 13 June 2018.
The main international speakers:

• Minna Halme, Professor of Management at Aalto University business school, Helsinki, Finland
• Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management and Director of the Executive PhD programme, Cass Business School, City University of London
• Andreas Georg Scherer, Chair for Foundations of Business Administration and Theories of the Firm, Zurich University, Switzerland
• Martin Fougère, Associate Professor of Management, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki
• Suzanne Young, Head of Department of Management, Sport and Tourism, La Trobe Business School, Australia
• Nikodemus Solitander, Director of the Centre for Corporate Responsibility (CCR), Helsinki
• Norman de Paula Arruda Filho, President of the Higher Institute of Administration and Economy (ISAE), Brazil

CR3+ is a direct collaboration between its four members, all of which are leaders in PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education). The four schools have been working together since 2008, with a view to exchanging ideas, teaching processes, programmes, and research in the field of corporate social responsibility.

— 2018

Claire-Isabelle Roquebert thesis defence

On Wednesday 14 November, Claire-Isabelle Roquebert, PhD student of the CSR Chair, defended the thesis she started 5 years ago. The main goal of her research was to understand how businesses adapt to respond to the new challenges they face in the current context of ecological crisis. The field of research was made up of two companies strongly involved in biodynamics through their adherence to its values and practices: Les Côteaux Nantais, a member of the Chair of CSR, and Body Nature.

Biodynamics is one of the founding movements of organic farming, and was developed against a backdrop of commodification and chemicalisation in the agricultural industry at the start of the 20th century. Today, its partisans criticise a loss of ethical and critical foundations in some organic farms, and continue to defend the vision of autonomous farms based on the equilibrium between plants, animals, humans, and cosmic forces. Claire-Isabelle Roquebert’s study helps us understand how participants, consumers, and directors approach CSR in such a context.
This research work was highly lauded by Les Côteaux Nantais and Body Nature, as well as by the members of the jury during its defence. “A must-read you absolutely have to discover! It’s goldmine, and one to watch as it’s optimistic about Body Nature’s Au-delà du Bio® initiative,” enthuses the founder of Body Nature, Gilles Guilbaud. The thesis will soon be available on the website http://theses.fr. Claire-Isabelle Roquebert continues her research as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Lausanne as of January 2019. Her work will centre on biodynamics and the issues surrounding its institutionalisation in order to transform practices in the agricultural sector.