On 27 January, Mines Paris-PSL hosted the Second Academic Day of Mission-Driven Companies — Theories and Practices, a major event that brought together some fifty researchers and practitioners to examine the evolution of Mission-Driven Companies, a status created by the Pacte Law (2019) and rooted in academic work, particularly that of i3, which developed a conceptualisation of the company as a place conducive to collective creation.
Dans un contexte international marqué par des nouvelles tensions géopolitiques et par des critiques renouvelées à l’égard des critères ESG, Jérémy Lévêque et Françoise Dany, organisateurs de la journée ont souligné la vitalité du dispositif. Près de 2 300 entreprises, représentant plus d’un million de salariés, ont à ce jour choisi de devenir Société à Mission. Pour la recherche, deux enjeux majeurs se dégagent : d’une part, étudier cette phénoménologie organisationnelle nouvelle que constituent les Sociétés à Mission – par exemple le fonctionnement des comités de mission ; d’autre part, tirer parti des spécificités de ce cadre juridique et de gouvernance pour aborder, avec un ancrage empirique renouvelé, des questions « classiques » de la recherche en sciences de gestion – les tensions entre autonomie stratégique et financement par exemple.
In an international context marked by new geopolitical tensions and renewed criticism of ESG criteria, Jérémy Lévêque and Françoise Dany, organisers of the event, emphasised the vitality of the scheme. To date, nearly 2,300 companies, representing more than one million employees, have chosen to become Mission-Driven Companies. Two major research challenges emerge: firstly, studying this new organisational phenomenology represented by mission-driven companies – for example, how mission committees operate; on the other hand, taking advantage of the specific features of this legal and governance framework to address, with a renewed empirical foundation, “classic” issues in management science research – such as the tensions between strategic autonomy and financing, for example.
Highlights included presentations on employee engagement and experiences, governance and law, the process of transforming into a mission-driven company, the attractiveness and impact measures of mission-driven companies, and the work experience and regulation by mission in the artificial intelligence sector. During a round table discussion, Elsa Brachet (CFDT) and Olivier Favereau (Paris-Nanterre University) debated the support needed by mission-driven companies today. Yohan Penel, Director of the Observatory of Mission-Driven Companies, presented a call for research partnerships aimed at facilitating secure access to data in order to stimulate academic work – methodological but not financial support. It provides researchers with access to data (and companies) in a secure and compliant environment. Finally, it enriches the observatory with its findings and by guiding future work towards areas relevant to research.
Participants were invited to share their ideas on the following topics: gaining a better understanding of mission-driven companies through data from the observatory, supporting an epistemic community on mission-driven companies, developing vigilance and alert capabilities, and teaching about the transformations associated with mission-driven companies.
The day ended with a call to consolidate the scientific community, strengthen vigilance and disseminate knowledge about the transformations associated with mission-driven companies. The presentations will be published very soon and the ideas put forward by the participants will be examined, according to Valérie Brisac, Director of the Mission-Driven Companies Community, and Kevin Levillain.