Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Ohada Law

Abstract

_________________________________________________________________ CSR refers primarily to a framework idea according to which a corporation is encouraged, if not obliged, to go beyond the speculative and economic goals that benefit its members only, in order to integrate, into its decision-making process, other more holistic considerations of an ethical, social and environmental nature for the benefit of all stakeholders. CSR is a key concept that attempts to reconcile economic objectives with social, ethical and environmental considerations, with the particularity of questioning interactions between a corporation and its societal, ethical and ecological environment. This paper has a modest, but not uninteresting, objective. First, it offers an exploratory study that sets out markers for a more exhaustive analysis of the potential for CSR in the field of law in the Ohada zone. Our study is intended to be both theoretical and pragmatic: it asks questions and suggests topics for review from a normative standpoint largely inspired by socio-economic analysis. One of the interesting features of our approach is to consider, comprehensively, a complex notion that reflects several different concerns and is crossed by various conceptual frameworks that must be re-read in an “enlightened” manner, to see how it could potentially be made operational as part of Ohada law. This previously unexplored approach could lead, in time, to the establishment of a transnational committee on CSR in the Ohada zone. _______________________________________________________________________ 1 Professor of economic law, Faculty of Law, Université Laval, Québec.Co-director of the economic law study centre (Centre d’études en droit économique, www.cede.fd.ulaval.ca) at the Faculty of Law, Université Laval. Editor-in-chief of the Bulletin de droit économique (www.droit-economique.org). E-mail: karounga.diawara@fd.ulaval.ca 2 Professor of international and domestic environment law, Faculty of Law, Université Laval, Québec, Canada. Advocate, member of the Québec Bar. Member of the economic law study centre (CEDE). Regular researcher at the Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University, Montréal. E-mail: sophie.lavallee@fd.ulaval.ca 40 Journal of Business Law and Ethics, Vol. 2(2), December 2014