REGS Outils de lecture

Since the publication of the Brundtland report "Our Common Future" in 1987, researchers in management sciences, particularly those in the business and society field, wanted to propose conceptions reconciling the environment, the social and the company performance. Therefore, the theoretical and empirical researches were much oriented towards promoting the idea of a possible convergence between the three dimensions of sustainable development. The stakeholder theory through its normative and instrumental dimensions was in the most this work the theoretical "shelter" to legitimate and defend this thesis. However, unlike displayed wishes, sustainability complexity emerges and imposes itself progressively. Especially after the year 2010, empirical researches recognize, increasingly, the existence of contradictions, tensions and paradox related to the corporate sustainability. This paradoxical aspect of sustainability is usually hidden in the line of traditional research. A position that needs to be revisited.

In our view, this position is explained by the extensive researchers use of the stakeholder theory, the foundations of which are silent, or at least do not adequately treat the obvious opposition of the interests of stakeholders. To help fill this gap, this theoretical communication, is part of a conceptual movement "paradoxical" already underway and proposes a conceptual shift to the paradox theory as a promising new theoretical perspective for understanding the corporate sustainability. By relying on the limits of the conceptual framework provided by the stakeholder theory.