Pourquoi l’essor de la gouvernance d’entreprise soutenable est-il inévitable ?

The internalization of corporate externalities in the governance of large companies is one of the strongest trends in the current evolution of company law. This trend is at the heart of the rise of sustainability?and no longer only profit?as the objective of good corporate governance. Indeed, limited companies, especially listed ones, have undergone significant changes over the last decade, driven by an dynamic renewal of the global context in which they evolve. These changes have led to a rethinking of the very goals of companies? governance. As a result, governance has had to internalize elements that had until then been perceived as externalities of the company. In this new vision, the purpose of governance is not only to guarantee shareholders a return on their investment, but also to achieve societal objectives, such as environmental protection, respect of human rights, employee well-being, etc. Traditionally supported by dedicated public policies (environmental law, labor law, etc.), these externalities have found a remarkable place in the field of company law itself and particularly in the law concerning public limited companies. For the first time in the history of company law, externalities of this type are included in the rules relating to the very functioning of companies and are therefore no longer simply imposed on them through external regulations. The aim is not to remove the objective of shareholder value from governance. It is simply to broaden the horizons of governance, in order to grasp, alongside shareholder value, these externalities, which have now become internal concerns. In this new approach, corporate governance?s center of gravity shifts toward a more ?patient? and sustainable definition of efficiency, involving the interests of all of the company?s stakeholders. Meanwhile, because sustainable corporate governance is a genuine legal innovation that involves rethinking the functions of the firm and its very workings, and even indirectly the allocation of its profits, it still faces hostility from some actors committed to the shareholder-oriented corporate governance model and to the agency theory that underpins it. However, sustainable corporate governance is on the way to becoming a truly universal standard, born out of a deliberative democratic process and endowed with a global dimension, representative of the transformations of the prevalent governance model. This observation is undoubtedly the most reliable indicator of the inevitable rise of sustainable governance, no matter how strong the criticisms and reluctance it may still encounter.