Comités de concertation en environnement et en santé environnementale : nouvelle gouvernance ?

Actes du Forum tenu les 30 et 31 octobre 2003 à l'Université du Québec à Montréal.Ce Forum a été rendu possible grâce à la contribution financière du ministère de l'Environnement et du ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du gouvernement du Québec, ainsi qu'à la participation du Centre québécois de développement durable et de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Commerce équitable comme vecteur de développement durable ?

Issu des initiatives de commerce alternatif, le commerce équitable d’aujourd’hui propose une nouvelle façon de faire du commerce. Le commerce équitable prétend même favoriser le développement durable. L’objectif de cet article était de voir les limites et les contributions du commerce équitable au développement durable à partir du cas d’une organisation de producteurs de café équitable au Mexique. Partant d’une conception tripolaire hiérarchisée du développement durable, nous démontrons que le commerce équitable tel qu’il est vécu s’éloigne de cette conception. Si le commerce équitable permet l’amélioration des conditions de vie des producteurs, à long terme, le virage commercial dans lequel il s’engage risque de compromettre la portée du commerce équitable à réellement instituer le développement durable.Originating from the initiatives of alternative trade, the fair trade movement proposes a new way of making trade. Fair trade claims to fulfill the requirements of sustainable development. The purpose of this article was to evaluate the limits and the contributions of fair trade to sustainable development starting from the case of an organization of fair trade coffee producers of Mexico. On the basis of a tripolar hierarchy definition of sustainable development, we show that fair trade moves away from this design. If fair trade is responsible for the improvement of living conditions of producers, in the long run, its mainstream tendancy risks to compromise its capacity to really institute sustainable development

Influence Of Corporate Social Responsibility As Perceived By Salespeople On Their Ethical Behaviour, Attitudes And Their Turnover Intentions

The ethical behavior of salespeople has become a tremendous challenge in the business world. While a great majority of big companies communicate about their Corporate Social Responsibility, this study shows for the first time that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has no influence upon the ethical behavior of salespeople. However, it demonstrates that a reputation associated with CSR can be a precious management tool that can be used to act upon salespeople’s satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. More specifically, CSR policies, as perceived by salespeople, increase their satisfaction level which, in turn, decreases their turnover intention. Likewise, CSR policies, as perceived by salespeople, increase their organizational commitment, which, in turn, contributes to decrease their turnover intention. In addition, this study provides avenues to explore regarding the tools influencing the ethical behavior of salespeople. The answers of 197 salespeople were collected using an innovative recruitment method with high potentialities - social networks

A multi-case integration across the coffee, forestry and textile sectors

Amid concerns for a regulatory void in transnational fields, the principle of private regulation has become institutionalized. Many sectors have seen the emergence of multiple and overlapping standards. When comparing the sectors, there is considerable variation in standard multiplicity. We build on three institutional perspectives that have been put forward to explain the emergence of sustainability standards—the economic, idealist and political-institutional perspectives—to analyze the phenomenon of standard multiplicity. Each perspective reflects a different kind of action logic and is simultaneously present and accessible to various parties involved. Based on a cross-sector analysis of standards multiplicity in the forestry, coffee and textile sectors, this article seeks to make two contributions. First, whereas these three perspectives have been presented as competing, we propose that they are complementary in offering partial explanations for different episodes in the dynamics underlying standards multiplicity in different sectors. Second, whereas most studies have analyzed standard setting in single sectors and thus have understood it as being an intra-sector phenomenon, our cross-sector analysis of the dynamics of standard setting suggests that it is propelled by both sector-specific contingencies and experiences as well as by the experiences from other sectors

Les organisations hybrides

In this article, we study hybrid organizations, namely those practicing social entrepreneurship and those practicing durable entrepreneurship. These organizations do not choose between the contradictory requirements fostered by the objectives that they pursue, be they double objectives (social and economic) or triple (social, economic and environmental). Rather, they choose to accept the tensions inherent in the pursuit of contradictory objectives. This study is based on a cluster analysis of 244 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It identifies and distinguishes between three main types of organization, commercial SMEs, social entrepreneurship SMEs and sustainable SMEs. These types of SMEs, even though they resemble each other in their structural characteristics (size, age, revenue), differ in terms of the actualization of their entrepreneurial and market orientations.  Dans cet article, nous étudions les organisations hybrides, c’est-à-dire celles de l’entrepreneuriat social et de l’entrepreneuriat durable. Ces organisations, plutôt que de choisir entre les exigences contradictoires posées par les objectifs doubles (social et économique) ou triples (social, économique et environnemental) qu’elles s’efforcent d’atteindre, choisissent d’accepter les tensions créées par la poursuite d’objectifs contradictoires. L’étude permet, à partir d’une analyse de regroupement réalisée auprès de 244 PME, d’identifier et de distinguer trois principaux types d’organisation, soit les PME commerciales, les PME d’entreprenariat social et les PME d’entrepreneuriat durable. En outre, ces types de PME, dont les caractéristiques structurelles (taille, âge, revenus) ne sont pas différentes, diffèrent en ce qui concerne l’actualisation de l’orientation entrepreneuriale et de l’orientation envers le marché

Pyruvate kinase deficiency confers susceptibility to Salmonella typhimurium infection in mice

The mouse response to acute Salmonella typhimurium infection is complex, and it is under the influence of several genes, as well as environmental factors. In a previous study, we identified two novel Salmonella susceptibility loci, Ity4 and Ity5, in a (AcB61 × 129S6)F2 cross. The peak logarithm of odds score associated with Ity4 maps to the region of the liver and red blood cell (RBC)–specific pyruvate kinase (Pklr) gene, which was previously shown to be mutated in AcB61. During Plasmodium chabaudi infection, the Pklr mutation protects the mice against this parasite, as indicated by improved survival and lower peak parasitemia. Given that RBC defects have previously been associated with resistance to malaria and susceptibility to Salmonella, we hypothesized that Pklr is the gene underlying Ity4 and that it confers susceptibility to acute S. typhimurium infection in mice. Using a fine mapping approach combined with complementation studies, comparative studies, and functional analysis, we show that Pklr is the gene underlying Ity4 and that it confers susceptibility to acute S. typhimurium infection in mice through its effect on the RBC turnover and iron metabolism