Corporate Innovation Strategies. Nacer Gasmi

particularly sensitive to the ethical consequences of Nike’s strategic choices. Finally, the third concerns public authorities and workers in the countries where the subcontracting is taking place. These actors remain at a distance from the ethical choices made by the multinational for different reasons, essentially based on considerations of lesser harm for some and of attractiveness and economic development for others. The public authorities of some Asian countries are happy to welcome foreign companies that provide their workers with jobs and salaries. The vulnerability of the workers employed, along with their demographic and cultural profile, makes them more conciliatory and less demanding with regard to the ethical problem; moreover, alternative job offers are very limited and the workers are at great risk of exploitation (Gasmi and Grolleau 2005). Workers and public authorities may even defend the notion of low costs in order not to compromise their competitive advantages, thus encouraging these companies to invest in their country to promote their economic development. All categories of stakeholders show that a societal cause is unlikely to escape criticism, and CSR managers must set themselves a goal so that the defenders of the societal mission outnumber those that oppose it.

      Certainly, CSV-based societal strategies can have a positive effect on the legitimacy of a company’s activities by reducing negative externalities or generating positive externalities while improving its competitive advantage. But the key factor of “competitive advantage” is only effective if customers perceive and consider both intangible (collective benefit) and tangible (individual private benefit to the customer) social and/or environmental attributes as an element of product differentiation and integrate them into their purchasing act. The appropriation of these attributes is not an intrinsic value for customers, as it depends on the level of their attention to CSR practices and their labels as management tools, in order to make inferences about these tools to differentiate the “societal products” that should correspond to their expectations. Labels, attention and appropriation therefore play a decisive role in the purchasing act.

      2.4.1. Labels, a tool for managing the appropriation of CSR as differentiating attributes

Societal attributes are based on the notion of trust (trust attributes), and the differentiation strategy that they can play raises questions about the asymmetry of information to which the customer may be exposed when making a purchase. Trust attributes have the peculiarity that they are practically never verified by the buyer before or after the purchase (Nelson 1970; Darby and Karni 1973). From this perspective, the social or environmental label, as a management tool linked to societal innovations, can reduce this asymmetry of information. A management tool corresponds to “any sign, technique or local and elementary know-how aimed at orienting or facilitating collective, individual and microsocial action” (de Vaujany 2006). A label, as a distinctive sign affixed to the product, makes it possible, in principle, to transform trust attributes into search attributes¹² and to solve the problem of information asymmetry between the seller and the consumer (Caswell 1998). The societal label then plays four major roles in optimizing the process of appropriating these societal attributes of product differentiation. First, it communicates to the customer a mass of information on the social and/or environmental practices developed by the company and the nature of the attributes (tangible and/or intangible) of differentiation that they can produce. Second, it provides a guarantee of trust as a credible societal attribute for the customer. This trust, which is a determining factor in the decision to purchase societal products, is the consequence of a belief created on the basis of information communicated by the company through its labels, and not of objective verification by the buyer (Gasmi and Grolleau 2002). Third, it can reinforce the competitive advantage that these attributes can generate (Quairel 2013). Fourth, the label also aims to push customers towards choosing products with societal attributes so that they can make inferences about CSR as a way of differentiating these products in their purchasing act. The concept of “appropriation” is defined as “the process by which the subject reconstructs for himself patterns of use of an artefact in the course of an activity that is meaningful to him” (Rabardel 1995). The label certainly plays a decisive role in the act of purchasing, but appropriation also depends on the attitudes that the customer may have towards CSR practices and the label as a management tool in general. In order to facilitate this appropriation, the company must place it in a psycho-cognitive appropriation perspective. This perspective, described as “pragmatic” and “semiotic” by Lorino (2002), fits into theoretical frameworks that are increasingly oriented towards a socio-cognitive prism, by adopting a structuration’s stance, in which the label is no longer considered as a lever for the rationality of the actors (clients) (de Vaujany 2006; Aggeri and Labatut 2010; Grimand 2012). The label then takes the form of an artifact for the action of a client in a situation, who will interpret it by giving it a meaning according to an individually and socially constructed pattern of use (Martineau 2012). The psycho-cognitive approach, which conceives appropriation as a process of acquiring new knowledge about management tools (labels), assumes that clients must develop a logic for optimizing the allocation of their attention (Kessous et al. 2010), with respect to these tools and the information they convey.

      2.4.2. Process of optimizing customer focus on societal attributes

      The process of caring about societal attributes is a prerequisite for customers to take ownership of them when they make a purchase. At the end of the 1990s, the issue of socially responsible consumption (SRC) began to take hold as a necessary change in consumer behavior in the markets (Dubuisson-Quellier 2013). SRC is “the fact that an individual buys goods or services that have a positive (or less negative) impact on his environment and uses his purchasing power to express his social and/or environmental concerns” (François-Lecompte 2005), or that he integrates into his individual choices or consumption practices, considerations linked to collective well-being (Dubuisson-Quellier 2013). Drawing on the work of McInnis et al. (1991), three main steps can explain this process of attentiveness.

      The first relates to the opportunity for customers to expose themselves to these labels and their ability to process the information they convey. Interaction between the labels and the customer implies access to the information environment on societal practices and their management tools. This environment operates at two levels (Garabedian 2007). The first is of a macroeconomic nature. The potential consumer of products with societal attributes will need to be informed about the state of the planet’s environment (level of soil pollution, toxicity of pesticides, etc.) and social issues (famine, unemployment, child exploitation, working conditions, etc.). The second level is of a microeconomic nature. In this case, the information should focus on CSR in general, societal products and labels as management tools. Do these products contain the expected “socially responsible” attributes? Do these labels really correspond to the nature of the societal practice communicated? Is accessibility to this informational environment on CSR and management tools (labels) the main additional attribute of product quality? (Roger 2000).

      The second stage concerns the client’s cognitive ability to process and understand the information transmitted by the labels. This understanding must focus on the mechanisms that lead CSR to “produce” societal attributes of differentiation. The ability to identify these attributes and to recognize their contribution (private and/or collective benefit) must not present any ambiguity in the client’s interpretation so as to allow inferences to be established. The term inference refers to the ability of a source of information to convey clarifications on these attributes that are not directly related to them (Larceneux 2002). The novelty of labels as management tools and societal attributes may afford the key factors of “opportunity” and “cognitive capacity”, a role of “pre-appropriation” of these attributes as a differentiating element in their act of purchasing.

The third step is to assess the potential of a market for products that incorporate “societal” attributes as an element of differentiation, as well as the profile of the customers who are capable of consuming them. Consumption has a role of social representation, whose functioning is structured around a central core¹³