Thursday April 9, 2025 marked an important milestone in the field of corporate governance, with the launch of the 3rd cycle (2025-2029) of the Théorie de l’Entreprise – Modèles de gouvernance & création collective teaching and research Chair. Godefroy Beauvallet, Director of Mines Paris PSL Université, underlined the ambition and boldness of the Chair’s missions since its creation. Indeed, in 2015, the objective was to develop a theory of the company based on collective creation, and to deduce from this a legal framework adapted to a creative and fair company. The initial work had led to the proposals introduced in the 2019 Pacte law, in the quality of the “mission-driven company”.

Ten years on, some sixty invited guests, institutions, companies and researchers gathered at Mines Paris PSL to witness the launch of the Chair’s third cycle of research, driven by a collective dynamic and a strong scientific ambition. While this new cycle is based on the growing movement of mission-based companies (over 2,000 in France today), it also addresses new issues such as the urgency of transitions, the growing awareness of unprecedented interdependencies between the actions of companies and society, and the questioning of public sustainability policies. The issue then broadens from the notion of corporate governance to that of transitions: what kind of governance for creative and socially just transitions?

Coordinators, Chair members, institutions, academics and companies spoke:

• Blanche Segrestin & Kevin Levillain, Chair coordinators ;
• Valérie Brisac, Managing Director of the Communauté des Entreprises à Mission ;
• Michael Ristaniemi, Legal and Policy Office at the European Commission;
• Jeroen Veldman, Professor of Corporate Governance at Nyenrode Business Universiteit ;
• Jérémy Lévêque, Lecturer-Researcher of the Chair, Mines Paris PSL ;
• Antoine Frérot, Chairman of Véolia ;
• Armand Hatchuel, Professor Emeritus, Mines Paris PSL.

The speakers discussed the development of mission-based companies and the European outlook for the system. They also presented the Chair’s new lines of research: the mission society movement as a vector for new global transformations, governance at different scales for just transitions, and the desirable evolution of law better adapted to collective action at multiple scales.

All these questions open up exciting perspectives and will be the subject of future meetings and debates at Mines Paris PSL. The next event in connection with mission-driven companies, the closing of the ANR OSMosis project devoted to running an observatory of mission-driven companies, will take place on July 8 at the Ecole des Mines.