The enterprise can cover a wide range of legal arrangements, in terms of size, objectives, structure and degree of attachment to one or more national legal orders. It can no more be identified with the small or medium-sized enterprise than with the multinational or the sole proprietorship, since there are so many possible manifestations of the same freedom to mobilize material and human resources to produce products or services which may themselves be extremely diverse. And this freedom to act, which characterizes the company, can be used to implement the general interest or organize civil solidarity, as well as to make profits.
Globalization" has emancipated large corporations from state control, enabling them to relocate and engage in tax, social and environmental law shopping. This rise in the legal power of transnational corporations is accompanied by the enslavement of smaller companies that are subject to them within the framework of the networks they weave around the globe, and by the undermining of the specificity of public or non-profit enterprises.
The downside of this emancipation of transnational corporations is that it precipitates them into a kind of institutional vacuum, and exposes them to new risks, which they try to ward off by invoking their capacity for self-regulation or their "social responsibility". In this way, they seek to assert themselves as independent legal orders, governed by their own "constitutions". However, such an assertion cannot ignore the imperial pressure exerted on them by the most powerful states on whose territory they operate, and which have the means to force them to comply with their legal systems.
The colloquium organized at the Collège de France on June 12 and 13, 2014 will focus on the legal analysis of the transformations affecting companies in this way, and their consequences for entrepreneurial freedom and the status of labor.