Measuring Extra-financial Information: A Critical Challenge for Companies

Over an eighteen-month period from September 2018 to March 2020, Futuribles regularly published articles and stakeholder testimony on the way certain companies have committed to — and participated in — the ‘producing of the common good’. The point was to show how private companies could contribute to the general interest through social, environmental actions etc., but also how the legislative framework was developing to encourage them to do so. Continuing that line of thinking and in the wake of the debate prompted this spring by the enforced departure of Danone’s CEO (who had made that company the first French entreprise à mission — roughly equivalent to a US ‘benefit corporation’ — to be quoted on the Stock Exchange), Geneviève Ferone Creuzetexploreswhat an entreprise à mission is and the difficulties that still exist in measuring the extra-financial actions and efforts of economic actors and taking them properly into account. But she also shows how the dissemination of information on this subject has developed, a trend that is very probably going to be firmed up and extended in the coming years.