Building a positive corporate governance

Organizations are subject to a dual movement of evolution: in the short term, they must adapt to fluctuations of the economic, geopolitical, energy, health, situations and so on. In the long term, they must be part of major societal and environmental transformations. Corporate governance must assume this dual mission of strategic decision and social responsibility, to combine performance and responsibility, which can be particularly problematic in small enterprises with informal processes and limited resources. The objective of this research is to structure the development of positive governance in SMEs, while respecting its ethics and identity. Our application field is a small company in the construction sector that will host this research over a period of three years. In order to prevent tension between individual and organisational requirements in a Corporate Social Responsibility approach, we find it important to also analyse employees’ state of mind and experience at work. In particular, the motivation process could be the focal point of convergence between individual expectations, organizational objectives (purpose, structure of the governance, leadership style, impact...) and the managerial framework implemented to articulate everything. Our interventions will be based on a mixed methods approach to bring out the components of governance, organizational culture and values, and on a co-design approach to clarify governance, increase social performance, leadership and employees’ work engagement to support corporate social responsibility and contribute to the common good. The first step of this research project will be dedicated to designing a tool for measuring social and environmental performance. Measurements will be based on employees’ perception of corporate performance in social and environmental dimensions at the internal level of the company, at the local level of the territory and at the societal and global level. The transformational approach will target organizational processes, leadership style and individual activities. It will be iteratively designed and tested during this research project is expected to contribute to the domain of ethical management.