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This study aims to focus on the understanding corporate social responsibility (CSR), this “novel” form of corporate engagement, and evaluating its capacity to regulate capitalism. The authors advance the following thesis: CSR constitutes a new variety of regulation of capitalism which, to work efficiently, must be built on collective institutions (through both collective agreements and forms of coercion), instead of strictly contractual forms (based on inter-individual relations and voluntary commitments).

To support this thesis, the authors use Karl Polanyi’s theory, in particular his concept of “fictitious commodities”. Like Polanyi, we contend that CSR is a necessary reaction to the new “great transformation” brought about by the financialisation of our economy which is currently in crisis. Polanyi agrees that this kind of regulation can yield results only when based on collective institutions. In the last section of the study, the authors attempt to determine how a “conventionalist analysis” of CSR could help us to precisely describe this phenomenon and how it could be institutionalised by actors (both inside and outside companies).

This paper theoretically demonstrates the role of institutions in CSR processes and the need to weigh them theoretically. In this sense, the paper demonstrates the aporia of a strictly contractualist framework, not only for the understanding of the phenomenon, but for its deployment.

This study proposes a theoretical framework, which is yet to be consolidated by empirical research.

The paper proposes salient elements of a public policy of responsibility.

The paper proposes a methodological framework to go beyond a bilateral representation of the institutional framework and to produce a collective representation of the negotiation.

This is an original paper in its theoretical positioning and the implications it suggests for economic policy.

The Fordist wage compromise may resemble an attempt to macroeconomically establish ethico-political rules governing the conflicting cooperation between capitalists and employees (Aglietta, 1998; Boyer, 1993). The question of the relationship between ethics and economics is, thus, not contemporaneous with the CSR movement. It is particularly misleading to see this recent movement as a fundamental break with the era of relationships between capital and labour, or even, as a definitive and modern break with the old ‘conflicting’ form of productive relations. The Fordist compromise represents a very subtle and substantial means of linking ethics and efficiency, but it is situated at the macro-social level, in contrast to the CSR movement.

Since Thomas Kuhn (1962), a historian of science who gave ‘paradigm’ its contemporary meaning, the term ‘paradigm’ has been widely used in science and social sciences to refer to a theoretical framework or thought pattern in any given discipline, or broadly, a set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect individual perceptions of a reality and their subsequent reactions. A dominant paradigm is the widely held system of thought in a society at a particular period of time. For Kuhn, a dominant paradigm can be changed and replaced by a new one, which often occurs in a revolutionary manner in science. In social sciences, ‘paradigm shift’ implies the changing ways of understanding and organising a social reality.

In 1767, did Sir James Steuart predict the political and financial crises that started the French Revolution? Étienne de Sénovert, the editor and translator of Steuart’s work, seems to argue to this effect in the introduction to the first French edition of An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy in 1789. The visionary “prediction” set forth by Steuart was the following: if the king of France had introduced public credit, this would have changed the political balance in French political society, making it very unstable. The English and the French governments used different ways of borrowing money in 1760: the French king contracted debts with a network of financiers close to the government, while the English government borrowed on the credit markets through the intermediary of the Bank of England. The second of these methods constitutes public credit and has proved its efficiency. According to Steuart, implementing the English public credit system in France could have dangerous consequences. Landed interests and moneyed interests would compete for the control of the State. The author realized that the French nobility, the landowners, as a social and economic group would have no chance in facing such a powerful rival (the public creditors). In this chapter, the author analyzes Steuart’s “prediction” as a coherent part of his systematic and original approach to political economy. Steuart’s theories about the role of political economy and the role of “interest” are connected to his understanding of institutions. Introducing such a complex support for the value as public credit might have different consequences in France and England. Steuart thinks each country’s economy should be analyzed according to its own institutional and social context.

Steuart’s work was still relevant in 1789 for two reasons. Firstly, the author’s prediction of political antagonism between capitalists and nobility anticipated the political conflict about debt expressed by pamphleteers such as Sieyès, Mirabeau, and Clavière between 1787 and 1789. This is the context of Étienne de Sénovert’s claim: the political narrative built by the revolutionaries of 1789 (rescuing the “sacred” public debt from royal despotism) fitted Steuart’s prediction. This may have been the incentive for the translation and publication of his work in 1789 and 1790. Secondly, Steuart’s financial and monetary theory was at the heart of the project of financial reform that would lead to the assignats. Steuart’s (1767) theory of public finance and state power in 1789 provides a key to the understanding the events of the time, and to how actors tried to make sense of them. Steuart made another crucial observation about the deep effect of what he called “the modern economy” upon the power of the governments of Europe: even an absolute monarch could not damage public credit without destroying his own sovereignty.

We investigate how firing notification procedures influence wage growth. Using a sample of 33 countries over the period 2006–2015, we show that administrative requirements in cases of dismissal have a positive and significant effect on wage growth. The result is robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of the firing notification restrictions, the involvement of third parties in the wage bargaining process, the minimum wage, the firms' training policy, and the composition of employment. These findings suggest that firing notification procedures foster the growth of wages by increasing the bargaining power of incumbent workers.

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.