The forward march of biobanking creates the need for an alternative approach to biobank governance. Biobanking encourages medical advancement by making the conduct of health-related research more efficient, by minimising physical harms to participants, and by facilitating personalised medicine and greater understandings of disease. Nonetheless, its characteristics that distinguish it from general health-related research often give rise to many ethical and social issues. For example, multiple and unexpected uses of biobank resources can render conventional informed consent inadequate for safeguarding participants and maintaining public trust and confidence. Also, because the size of a biobank cohort is normally large, biobanking usually requires considerable management resources and this can mean that biobanks can likely be financially dependent upon for-profit entities. This dependency can cause concern among participants and publics about commercial exploitation. These issues suggest that a new approach to biobank governance is required to address them. Indeed, their complexity and the sheer longevity of biobanking itself also suggest that it is relatively feasible and coherent to address them by focusing on a relationship between participants and biobankers. This involves many aspects of interaction and reflects an element of continuity, which is crucial to biobanking success, as opposed to one-off measures. Consequently, with the aim of addressing issues that arise from biobanking, this thesis offers an analysis of the participant-biobanker relationship that can deal with these issues. Such a relationship constitutes an authentic research relationship in biobanking (“ARR”). Based on this premise, the main research question of my thesis is to ask: What form of research relationship is appropriate for effective and ethical biobanking practices? Three sub-questions are raised to solve this top-level research question. They start with a normative question of why the ARR proposed in this thesis is desirable for biobanking. The next sub-question asks what this ARR should look like from a conceptual perspective. For a practical respect on my proposals, the last sub-question concerns the ways in which the ARR can be fostered in practice. To address these research questions, my thesis first establishes the main characteristics of the proposed ARR as the fundamental notion thereof. These main characteristics are used to answer the first sub-question. For the second sub-question, the thesis suggests that the ARR should be based on the concept of partnership, as opposed to solidarity, mainly because partnership can exhibit the main characteristics of the ARR – as argued – and can also be prescribed in a governance manner. The thesis then uses partnership as a basis for proposing the key features of the ARR, which are deemed to be a conceptual framework for the ARR. To answer the last sub-question, the thesis uses this conceptual framework to propose a partnership model for biobank governance that can be used to develop the ARR in practice. My original contribution is to propose a novel approach to an ARR, and this ARR is based on the concept of partnership. In other words, my thesis argues that the pursuit of the ARR, which looks like a partnership relationship, is an important element of biobanking success. In this respect, my thesis is about a sociologically informed role for partnership in biobank governance. It also provides a nuanced epistemological grounding for a participant-biobanker relationship in both conceptual and practical ways. From a philosophical perspective, my thesis proposes an ethical framework for biobank governance that perceives partnership as a virtuous trait for biobankers and provides rules for acquiring this trait through biobanking practices. Notably, it is argued that this partnership is not – nor need it be – the legal paradigm of partnership, which fundamentally refers to for-profit business association. While law might have a role to play in facilitating the development of the ARR, it cannot prescribe the ARR nor should it attempt to do so.

Zugl.: Wien, Wirtschaftsuniv., Diss., 2008

Cette thèse de doctorat en sciences de gestion interroge les impacts des collaborations entre les entreprises et la sphère non gouvernementale. Elle envisage en ce sens dans quelle mesure les ONG contribuent à la performance globale des firmes à travers leur responsabilité sociale.L’état de l’art qui porte sur les mots clés de notre sujet a permis de souligner un triple élargissement au sein des entreprises : premièrement, une ouverture de leur gouvernance qui se traduit par l’introduction de nouvelles parties prenantes dans le cœur névralgique des sociétés ; deuxièmement, un approfondissement de la performance qui n’est plus abordée uniquement sous un angle économique et financier mais également sous ses aspects sociaux, environnementaux et sociétaux ; et enfin, un développement des outils de mesure de la performance. En effet, le reporting économique est désormais complété par des rapports de développement durable. Cet élargissement des outils de mesure est parfois caractérisé par un reporting intégré qui systématise le lien entre le financier et l’extra-financier.Les enjeux de cette recherche qualitative à vocation exploratoire sont triples : il s’agit tout d’abord de comprendre l’implication des acteurs en caractérisant leur posture dans les partenariats mais aussi en faisant la lumière sur leurs motivations à collaborer. Puis, il s’agit de déterminer les modalités des partenariats qui existent entre les firmes et les ONG, en spécifiant la notion de « dialogue » et les caractéristiques des partenariats stratégiques. Enfin, il s’agit de mesurer la contribution des ONG à la performance globale en analysant ses impacts sous le prisme d’une performance quadri-axiale et plus spécifiquement en ayant recours au cadre méthodologique du Reporting Intégré.Nos travaux se sont concrétisés par l’étude documentaire et statistique de 301 entreprises ainsi que des ONG qui gravitaient autour de leur sphère socio-économique. Puis, nous avons à partir de cet échantillon réalisé 44 entretiens semi-directifs auprès d’entreprises et d’ONG et avons complété notre recherche par une étude de cas sur le partenariat stratégique entre Michelin et le WWF. Lors de cette étude de cas nous avons à la fois interrogé des parties prenantes internes à cette collaboration, comme les responsables en charge de la coopération, mais aussi des parties prenantes externes, comme le Directeur Général Délégué de l'International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) ou encore le Directeur Général du Syndicat des Professionnels du Pneu (SPP). / This doctoral thesis in management sciences questions the impacts of collaborations between companies and the non-governmental sphere. It takes into consideration the extent to which the NGOs contribute to the overall performance of firms through their social responsibility.The state-of-the-art of the key words with regards to our topic has highlighted a threefold expansion within companies: first, an openness of their governance which translates into the introduction of new stakeholders in the core of the society; secondly, a deepening of performance that is no longer observed solely from an economic and financial perspective but also from its social and environmental aspects; and finally, the development of performance measurement tools. As a matter of fact, economic reporting is now complemented by sustainable development reports. This expansion of measurement tools is sometimes characterized as an integrated reporting that systematizes the link between the financial and the extra-financial.The challenges of this qualitative research with an exploratory aim are threefold: firstly, it addresses understanding the involvement of the actors by characterizing their posture within partnerships but also by shedding light on their motivations to collaborate. Secondly, it is necessary to determine the modalities of the partnerships that exist between the firms and the NGOs, specifying the notion of "dialogue" and the characteristics of strategic partnerships. Finally, this research addresses measuring the contribution of NGOs to the overall performance by analyzing its impacts under the prism of a four-axial performance and more specifically using the methodology of Integrated Reporting.Our research has been materialized through a documentary and a statistical study of 301 companies and NGOs that revolved around their socio-economic sphere. Based on this sample, we further conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with companies and NGOs and completed our research with a case study on the strategic partnership between Michelin and WWF. In this case study we have on one hand interviewed internal stakeholders, such as those in charge of cooperation, and on the other hand, external stakeholders, such as the Deputy Managing Director of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) ) and the General Manager of the Union of Professionals for Tires (Syndicat des Professionnels du Pneu - SPP).