In the years leading up the last French Presidential election, economic growth, or “la croissance”, became a political buzzword in France. The French president at the time, François Hollande, staked his reelection on growth. He failed to deliver and never…
This summer, I spoke with Anais Cherif, who is a journalist for La Tribune, a business news outlet in France. We discussed the possibility that Mark Zuckerberg could be fired from Facebook. I pointed out that for this to happen,…
I recently did a review of studies published between 2008 and 2018 that explored independent directors who sit on the boards of for-profit corporations. I am going to discuss what I learned from these studies and highlight three key takeaways…
I am discovering the work of Iris Marion Young, a philosopher and political scientist who wrote much about justice. I find her work relevant to think about corporations and their responsibility, because she discusses the notion of personal responsibility, which…
Marilynne Robinson recently published an article (“What are we doing here?“) on humanities and their role in university education. She argues that humanities help individuals be capable citizens. She speaks about Toqueville and the beauty of knowledge, about a cab…
CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility, is often viewed as an obvious, readily understood, homogenous concept. Yet a close look at CSR research challenges this view. Researchers have proposed a plethora of definitions for CSR, with each definition assigning a particular meaning…
Between May and December 2008, Western Digital, one of the largest computer hard disk manufacturers in the world, experienced a severe shock*. Its stock price fell from $37.53 to $11.45. In 2009, the company reported in its proxy statement that…
Last week I visited Verdun, a town in France about a ninety-minute car ride from where I grew up in Luxembourg. It was my first time in Verdun, a charming town with a vibrant center, lots of those boulangeries that…
Much of the corporate value creation today comes from machines, robots, and computers. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has a market value of 553 billion U.S. dollars, and employs 70,000 people. Boeing, an older and more traditional firm, is…
