Setting Up in a Rural Environment: A Sustainable Strategic Management Approach

Experiments carried out in rural areas attest to the fact that it is possible to revive the dynamism of a territory, even when it does not seem to have major assets and resources, by enabling the company setting up there to draw upon the territory's resources to generate a highly coherent and adapted value proposition. Metropolization refers to the ideological vision according to which metropolises are automatically destined to attract the bulk of activities; they thus highlight the potential role of public policies in the spatial planning choices of recent decades. This chapter proposes the concept of "responsible" strategic management, which advocates the full integration of corporate social responsibility schemes at the heart of strategic thinking. It presents the case study of The Institut de Tramayes for researchers and practitioners working on issues of territorial dynamics, the social economy, and sustainable development.