This study approaches CERDOTOLA from a librarian perspective while looking at the introduction of digital libraries and possible issues that could arise during the development of a cultural digital repository. In spite of existing cooperation agreements between CERDOTOLA and various local, regional, and international organizations involved in cultural documentation, the present inter-institutional collaborations rarely reflect a level of involvement that brings direct input from stakeholders. This problem is set within normative institutionalism and reveals the difficulties in leveraging the technologies of digital libraries in order to effectively contribute to the development digital collections. This research is a qualitative case study that analyzes and discusses 10 individual interviews, 2 group interviews, 1 focus group discussion, and multiple site observations with critical discourse analysis. The analysis is based on Siegfried Jäger and Florentine Maier’s interpretation of Foucault’s critical discourse analysis and dispositive. A major finding of the study is that there is a lack of trust in and among institutions that impairs any collaboration is spite of the fact that digital libraries are valued and progressively accepted by the local LIS community. An organization such as the CERDOTOLA that tends to capitalize on alliances and inter-institutional collaborative agreements may need to re-conceptualize its view of stakeholders and reconcile the stakeholders’ understanding of digital libraries and digital libraries’ contents with its internal objectives. The conclusion of the study is that a redefinition of stakeholders’ roles and the direct involvement of the groups who own cultural materials could ease the documentation and digitalization process. Since the study mainly focuses on the opinion of LIS professionals and the example of one specific ethnic group, further research is recommended with additional groups using the same methodology. / Program: Masterprogram: Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, Digitala bibliotek och informationstjänster

This research leads to investigate the response of French companies through their corporate sustainability policies as a result of the different types of pressure that stakeholders can bring. The influence of stakeholders is increasingly significant towards ethical and environmental issues. Stakeholders do not hesitate to set up actions to make themselves heard. Social and environmental concerns facing this polluting industry make food companies exposed to more and more pressures that they must manage.  The academic literature necessary for the understanding of this study was carefully selected from online academic libraries. The literature review defined the objective of balancing Profit, People and Planet in corporate sustainability policies and its implementation through the Triple Bottom Line model. Also, the pressure groups are defined according to the academic literature and associated with Freeman's theory on stakeholders. This literature was coupled with collected primary data. Interviews were conducted with three French companies of different sizes to guarantee a realistic representation of the market. The interest of the inductive method used is to be able to apply the observations made on a larger scale.   The results obtained are grouped under five themes to facilitate their identification: Quality, Ethics, Environment, Consumer's power, and Well-Being. Under each of these themes, one or more stakeholders exert pressures to achieve the same objective. The strategies adopted by companies vary according to the type of pressure they face. Each company adapts its corporate sustainability policies to the pressures according to its size. Large companies will be better resourced than small ones. All corporate actions have two objectives: the satisfaction of their stakeholders and the improvement of the company in terms of sustainability.   This thesis contributes to the Stakeholder's theory and Triple Bottom Line model. The combination of these two theories is essential to explain the two converging phenomena of this thesis: pressures and sustainable responses.

La confrontation des difficultés de l’entreprise aux droits des salariés conduit à s’interroger sur la coexistence et l’articulation de disciplines à vocations différentes. Face aux difficultés économiques de l’entreprise, les conflits d’intérêts peuvent atteindre leur paroxysme. Il revient alors au droit d’utiliser des critères objectifs, acceptés par l’ensemble des parties prenantes, afin de dégager des solutions permettant le maintien de l’activité et de l’emploi.L’analyse de la prise en compte des droits des salariés lorsque l’entreprise rencontre des difficultés économiques, faite sous le prisme de la stakeholder’s theory, aboutit à l’insatisfaction. Entre justice sociale et efficacité économique une recherche d’équilibre s’impose. Pourtant, aussi bien la loi que les apports jurisprudentiels n’y contribuent guère. Des pans entiers du droit du travail et du droit des entreprises en difficulté s’ignorent. L’absence de normes communes entre les matières stérilise la recherche de solutions de compromis. Par suite, aussi bien dans le cadre de la prévention des difficultés de l’entreprise, qu’au titre du traitement judiciaire de celles-ci, ou encore au niveau de la reprise de l’entreprise en difficulté, le conflit aboutit à un équilibre précaire et insatisfaisant. Les droits des salariés sont pris en compte de manière irrégulière, saccadée, et parfois, injustifiée. / Confronting the difficulties of companies with the rights of workers entails discussing the co-existence and the articulation of subject areas whose purposes are different. When a firm encounters economic difficulties, conflicts of interest can become paroxystic. Thus it is the Law which will be resorted to so as to provide objective criteria acceptable by all stakeholders in order to shape solutions which will ensure the preservation of both the activity and jobs. Assessing workers’ rights at a time when a company encounters economic difficulties through the prism of the stakeholders’ theory regularly leads to dissatisfaction. It is essential to balance social justice with economic efficiency. Yet neither the law nor any contributions of the court really help to do so. Large segments of labour law and of bankruptcy law are incompatible. The lack of common standards between both subject matters makes finding compromise solutions impossible. Thus the conflict leads to a precarious and unsatisfactory equilibrium, whether it be in matters of prevention of difficulties for a firm, of their judiciary treatment or of the takeover of the company in difficulty. Workers’ rights are taken into account in a fashion which can be irregular, erratic and at times unjustified.

Cette thèse explore les formes d’engagement et apporte une réponse à la question : Que devient aujourd’hui le contrat normatif de profession des comptables libéraux dans un contexte de mutation de leur profession ? Nous avons croisé deux champs théoriques : celui du comportement organisationnel avec la théorie du contrat psychologique et la sociologie des professions avec le modèle intégré de De Rozario (2006). Nous avons conduit 20 entretiens qualitatifs auprès de comptables libéraux et mobilisé une grille d’analyse construite à partir de la théorie du contrat psychologique qui prend en compte les actants humains et non humains. Les résultats nous permettent de dire que malgré les violations contractuelles actuelles et les transitions, la profession de comptables libéraux continue de faire engagement par son contrat normatif. Il est composé de trois contrats psychologiques individuels qui sont : transactionnel, transitionnel et relationnel. Les mutations actuelles incitent à des contrats psychologiques transactionnels plus denses avec des réseaux d’experts et un contrat psychologique relationnel avec les outils de gestion surtout digitaux pour répondre aux conjonctures problématiques. Finalement, le contrat relationnel avec la profession réduit aujourd’hui à sa composante diplôme, mute vers des contrats relationnels de réseaux experts de proximité. / This thesis explores the forms of commitment and provides an answer to the question: What is becoming of the normative contract of chartered accountants in a context of change of their profession? We crossed two theoretical fields: that of the organizational behavior with the theory of the psychological contract and the sociology of the professions with the integrated model of De Rozario (2006). We conducted 20 qualitative interviews with chartered accountants and mobilized an analysis grid based on the psychological contract theory that takes into account human and non-human contract makers. The results allow us to say that despite the current contractual violations and transitions, the profession of liberal accountants continues to lead to a commitment through its normative contract. The latter comprises three individual psychological contracts which are transactional, transitional and relational contracts. Current changes are leading to increasingly complex transactional psychological contracts with networks of experts and a relational psychological contract with management tools, especially digital devices, to respond to the crisis they face. Finally, the relational contract with the profession reduces today to its diploma component, moving towards relational contracts of expert networks of proximity.

In the field of sustainable finance, Environmental-, Social- and Governance-ratings (ESG) have become an acknowledged measurement of a firm's sustainability performance. The increased awareness of sustainability issues in today's society is undeniable. However, based upon contradicting results from previous research, it was uncertain if investors were rewarding a firm’s sustainability efforts in the form of a lower cost of equity. The purpose of this thesis has therefore been to examine the relationship between sustainability, risk and valuation as well as stock-price behavior in times of crisis regarding large firms publicly listed in the Nordic countries. In order to fulfil the purpose, various multiple regression models have been conducted on quarterly data from the period between 2011 to 2020. The approach chosen to examine if ESG has a relation to the cost of equity has been to calculate the implied cost of equity inferred from consensus forecasts of future financial development and stock price at each point in time, also known as the ex-ante cost of equity. Since the independent variable ESG-score was not likely to be the sole variable to affect the independent variables in our multivariate regression models, we have followed previous studies in the choice of control variables. The empirical results of this study showed a significantly negative relationship between a firm’s ESG-score and the cost of equity. In addition, our results showed a significantly positive relationship between a firm’s ESG-score and both the price-to-earnings ratio as well as the price-to-book ratio while no significant relationship between a firm’s ESG-score and the enterprise value to earnings before interest and taxes ratio could be established. Finally, the results of this thesis showed that firms with a greater ESG-score generated excess returns during the latest market turmoil of 2020 caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. This thesis challenges the value-destruction view of ESG-efforts since our results indicate that investors are pricing sustainability risk with a negative risk premium in line with the value creation approach. No causality test has been performed during this study, however several possible mechanisms by which ESG impacts the valuation and crisis resistance have been discussed based upon previous research and the theoretical framework. We argue for the reduced cost of equity to reflect diminished information asymmetry, a larger investor base, improved growth and cash-flow opportunities as well as reduced risk for litigations as aconsequence of a more sustainable business conduct. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study on the topic has been conducted on the Nordic markets. This study fills thus a research gap on the relation between sustainability, risk andequity market valuation and we sincerely hope to have contributed to academia with new approaches.

Face à un environnement incertain marqué par une instabilité sans cesse croissante, les entreprises s’efforcent de rechercher la performance à la fois globale et durable considérée désormais comme un levier non seulement de pérennité, mais aussi d’avantage concurrentiel primordial (Porter et Kramer, 2006; Crane et Matten, 2004). Ainsi, la responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise (RSE) est perçue comme un thème fédérateur en sciences de gestion et de par sa dimension sociétale dans les sciences économiques et sociales prenant tout son sens dans le management opérationnel des entreprises. Considérée comme le prolongement de la prise en compte du développement durable (rapport Brundtland 1987) dans ses implications managériales, la RSE cristallise l’attention de nombreux chercheurs depuis plusieurs décennies, notamment dans sa dimension sociale, environnementale et normative (ISO 14000) depuis une vingtaine d’année et sociétale (ISO 26000) depuis les années 2000. Si la littérature foisonnante sur le concept de RSE reste en débat, force est de constater qu’elle traite très peu des mécanismes de construction des pratiques RSE et moins encore du rôle que les stakeholders jouent dans cette construction. Dans un tel contexte, prenant appui sur la stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Oliver, 1991; Clarkson, 1995; Mitchell et al., 1997; Sethi, 1995; Rowley, 1997), l’analyse des données collectées suite à une investigation de huit mois auprès de six entreprises forestières au Cameroun, révèle d’une part que le modèle de Carroll (1979, 1991) de la RSE est contingent au contexte et que le comportement stratégique orienté RSE des entreprises du secteur de l’industrie forestière au Cameroun est fortement corrélé à la nationalité de l’entreprise. D’autre part, cette étude fait état de ce que la variable « champ d’activité » a un effet non déterminé sur le comportement stratégique adopté par les entreprises de ce secteur forestier. Enfin, cette recherche révèle également que la certification forestière FSC représente le gage d’un engagement volontaire en matière de RSE des entreprises d’exploitations forestières au Cameroun. La présente recherche ouvre la voie aux travaux futurs pour internaliser les pratiques de la RSE par les parties prenantes dans le management stratégique des entreprises les plus confrontées aux défis environnementaux. / In an uncertain environment that is also marked by a growing instability, firms try to seek a global and sustainable performance which is considered as a lever not only for longevity but also for competitive advantage (Porter and Kramer, 2006; Crane and Matten, 2004). Thus, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is perceived as a unifying topic in management science and, by its societal dimension, in the economic and social sciences. Considered as an extension to the consideration of sustainable development in its managerial implications (Brundtland report, 1987), CSR has been at the attention of a large number of researchers for several decades now, in particular for twenty years in its social, environmental and normative dimension (ISO 14000) and since the 2000’s in its societal nature.While the concept of CSR is still under debate in its rather large literature, it should also be noted that this literature is usually silent on the construction mechanisms of CSR practices and even more on the role that stakeholders play in this construction.In this context, and relying on stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Oliver, 1991; Clarkson, 1995; Mitchell et al., 1997; Sethi, 1995; Rowley, 1997), the present analysis of the collected data from an eight-month-long in-depth investigation of six forestry firms in Cameroun yields several findings: First, the CSR model in Carroll (1979, 1991) is contingent to the context and the strategic CSR behaviour of the different firms in the forestry industry in Cameroun is strictly correlated to the nationality of these firms. Second, this study shows that the “field of action” variable has a non-significant effect on the strategic behaviour adopted by the firms in this forestry industry. Finally, this research also reveals that the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification represents the deposit of a voluntary commitment in terms of CSR of the forestry exploitation firms in Cameroun. The present work also opens new lines for future research focussing on the internalisation of the CSR practices by the contracting parties in strategic management of the firms that are in direct confrontation to the environmental challenges.