Strategic partnerships between NGOs and businesses are still little studied in the French context, but their importance is more and more strong, both empirically and theoretical. The objective of this research is to better understand these very special relations between two organizations whose objectives are a priori quite distant. One of the common interests between NGOs and businesses is the social responsibility of the company (CSR). Indeed, CSR, beyond even the definitions proposed in the literature, all questions taking account of the expectations of the stakeholders of the company, and the ability of companies to take account of these stakeholders, and to their account. This approach is most prevalent and is referred to as 'firmo-centric’. Here we have chosen a different approach which is ‘NGO-centric’. It appeared to us as a new way of approaching the NGO reports - company, which is part of the prospect of a 'open CSR' which we support in this work.CSR can be regarded as a vector that allows NGOs to reach businesses and to influence their positioning, their strategies. Thus, we establish our problematic: how partnerships with NGOs can influence the social responsibility of the company?To respond, we adopt a qualitative research approach, multi case and comparative. We have followed two distinct phases: eleven exploratory cases, and three cases in depth. We follow abductive approach, with several back and forth between the field and the theoretical constructs selected.The main argument in this doctoral work is to support the strategic partnership allows NGOs to contribute to the construction of companies’ social responsibility strategies. It is even a key leverage of this construction. However, this strategic leverage depends on different variables (or requirements). Some have already been identified in the literature, some not. We thus highlight new variables and offer an enrichment of literature. This enrichment takes the form of a classification of variables or prerequisites identified by literature, supplemented by the new identified variables. The comprehensive study of cases can also offer two complementary models of strategic partnerships NGOs - Companies, a comprehensive (with leverages and restraints) and the other dynamic (in four phases). These models illustrate our approach referred to as ‘open CSR’: the importance of the NGO in the definition of companies’ social responsibility strategies, as well as the dynamic character of the NGO-business partnerships, are considered together. We show that the strategic partnership NGO - Company enabling NGOs to co-build companies’ social responsibility strategies when the dynamics of the process is complete (four phases).
Strategic partnerships NGO - Companies : to co-build CSR strategies?