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- Report n°2: An integrated approach to economic and social contestability in business
Report n°2: An integrated approach to economic and social contestability in business
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Table of contents
- Preface by Denis Gasquet
Preface by Denis Gasquet
Few entrepreneurs have not at some time been made aware of the paradox of the difficulty in transforming a technical, economic or commercial success into a social one. Why is it that the social acceptance of the successes of specialists in a particular field or activity is not immediate or that the recognition of the common benefits created by the success of an industrial project is not automatic? Why is it when a leading firm in its market creates an innovation or offers a range of services to society exceeding its economic performance, when it creates general wealth, when it improves the local environment and standard of living or when it helps to protect the environment that this visible, objective success does not attract total, immediate, unconditional support? Instead, by some obscure, slightly devilish mechanism or the effects of one of the main principles of balance in our human societies, these successes all too often provoke reactions of exasperation, questioning and doubts as if all forms of success were accompanied by the seeds of contradiction.
This issue of the social contestability of firms in the environmental sector has been examined by Olivier Godard and Ignace Adant from the Econometric Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris. It is interesting to note that their studies pave the way for a better understanding of the social regulation mechanisms governing the most useful economic activities in society and enable us to begin to gain an objective idea of social acceptance procedures which could be applied by firms in the future.
In an ideal future, we may be able to go beyond conflicting interests which all too often restrict action and develop our industrial activities in a peaceful, understanding world since we will have learned to take different points of view into account at the outset.
But we should also hope that different analyses, contradictory interests and radically different viewpoints continue to challenge our achievements. That is how many social developments which are considered normal have been achieved and will be achieved in the future.
Denis Gasquet
CEO of the Waste Management of Veolia Environnement
and Deputy Director general of Veolia Environnement