Need new inspiration to give a new dimension to your job or completely change it? Youmatter gives you a selection of recent books to reflect on the major issues of the moment (biodiversity, AI, CSR, etc.) and give you the keys to getting the right momentum!
101 words to reinvent CSR
101 to go beyond CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, is the challenge of this primer initiated by the president of the college of sustainable development directors (C3D), Fabrice Bonnifet. By summoning the actors of the ecological and social transformation of companies and more broadly of our economy and our society, it takes us between the most specific words – even jargony – like CSRD, to the most sensitive like “poetic revolution” .
However, they all have in common that they want to take us towards a shift in business, where true performance would be to “last”, taking care of the planet and people, where CSR would no longer be a “hold up” having only contributed to “strengthen the immune defenses of capitalism” as Geneviève Férone-Creuzet points out, but where her S would finally mean “systemic” et “strategic”as Cécile Renouard wishes. A CSR that would mean changing « radical » of our economy and which would be synonymous with ” desire “ of sobriety as Jean-Marc Jancovici hopes.
A book to keep on your desk in case you need a motivational shot to work towards ecological and social transformation and we really need it! Please note that part of the profits from the work will be donated to the Banlieues Climat association.
Collective under the direction of Fabrice Bonnifet, the 101 words of CSR for the use of all, Archibooks, 2024, 206 pages, €12.90.
Fashion, influence, gastronomy, journalism: committed testimonies from those who have changed their profession
When Thomas Wagner, then working in finance, became aware of the extent of the ecological problem in 2018, he dove into scientific studies and everything he found on the web to create the Bon Pote blog, now considered as a reference on climate change. After a few years as a double agent, he took the plunge to gain alignment and left finance to devote himself to providing information on this major problem. A journey that is beginning to spread in the world of influence. When, while sorting through her children's clothes, Karine Renouil Tiberghien realizes that her eldest only has one drawer dedicated to them while her youngest has three, with the added bonus of new clothes and still with the label , she wonders why do we buy so much for using so little? Because it's not expensive? From this question, the desire was born for her to take over a baby textile brand, returning to family fundamentals, but integrating the environmental dimension… Here again, her choice is that of more and more people from the fashion sector , or not. As for Yamina Aïssa Abdi, she was far from suspecting that an urban wasteland with a market gardener would be at the origin of her new professional and social project to appease and recreate good living together in her Toulouse district plagued by insecurity !
These life journeys, where women and men decided to change professions or to integrate the environmental dimension into the one they had been practicing for more or less long time, are retraced in the “Engaged Stories”, a new collection from Editions The Beach. In addition to the testimonies, each booklet of around sixty pages, devoted to a particular sector, is sponsored or sponsored by a personality who has been involved for many years, who gives his analysis on the evolution of the sector and the challenges that remain. to travel through one's own journey. There are also charters or manifestos which provide avenues of action and readings to complete the reflection. In short, a concentrate of useful and embodied information that makes you want to shake up everything! The first four booklets, coordinated by the journalist Anne-Sophie Novel, give a furious desire to multiply them in as many sectors as possible, because we know, we must all evolve our professions in light of the ecological and social challenges we face. .
4 booklets: The world of influence/fashion/journalism/gastronomy facing the ecological emergency, collective, Committed stories, La Plage editions, September 2024, 64 pages, €6.95.
A guide to retraining in CSR and impact
That's it, your decision is made: you are going to act to put more sustainability into your profession or completely branch out. Yes but how to do it? Do you have the necessary skills? If not, how can I acquire them? What types of jobs should you go for? So many questions that sometimes delay or even postpone your change of direction until very far into the future. To avoid this, follow the advice of the pro, Caroline Renoux, who created Birdéo, the first recruitment firm dedicated to impact professions 15 years ago.
In this guide, she has put together 5 steps for you to follow, with a short guide on what CSR, ESG and other more or less obscure acronyms are that guide companies in their ecological and social transformation, testimonials from key players in the sector or people looking for a position, tools to prospect or highlight your profile, but also questionnaires that help you take stock of your approach! And bonus, if you are lucky enough to have finally landed the job of your dreams, you will also find advice for a successful job placement!
5 steps to retrain in CSR and impact, guide for executives in search of meaning, Caroline Renoux, Dunod, 2024, 192 pages, 22 euros.
Consider biomimicry in your strategy!
“The challenges we face today will require creativity and innovation”making our deductive modes of reasoning obsolete, according to Paul Boulanger. And if we were then inspired by the mode of reasoning of the “life system” (biomimicry and bio-inspiration) – without obscuring its limits which must be reviewed in the light of ethics and our social organization – both for management, resource management or the definition of our trajectories? “The manager of tomorrow will become the company's gardener, a gardener steeped in the principles of ecological engineering”he hopes.
A graduate of Toulouse Business School and doctor of management sciences focusing on biomimicry, Paul Boulanger is today founder and consultant of Pikaia, a firm that supports companies in “resilient and regenerative” models. By comparing the economic organization of the company and the functioning of life, it gives us a new reading grid of our environment to make the best decisions with regard to the context of exceeding planetary limits. In 9 chapters modeled on the principles of life (principle of relevance, creativity, weighting, transmission, interdependence), it provides a useful guide for reflection as for action, to be read in the order of its choice like a “puzzle book” in which we would be the hero!
Biomimicry and business strategy: 9 principles to reconcile the economy and life, Paul Boulanger, Rue de l'échiquier, 2024, 320 pages, €25
An anti-manual to decipher the myths, risks and what we can do with AI
AI is on everyone's lips, but do we really know what it is and what its implications are? In this ultra-pedagogical anti-manual, we understand without complicated formulas the different forms of artificial intelligence (from deep learning to generative AI (GPT chat and others), from weak AI to strong AI, (this that is to say endowed with conscience and sensitivity – we are not there…yet?) but also its ethical, environmental, economic, democratic and social implications in the world of work in particular but also in sport and health.
Written by two specialists in the subject, the manual remains hyper accessible for all those who want to go further on the history and future of these technologies which will revolutionize our relationship with knowledge, with the machine and in reality with ourselves . Without falling into blissful optimism or easy criticism, he finds the balance to provide us with food for thought by using both theory and concrete examples. Finally, he provides some rules of the game to avoid ultimately being overtaken by the machine and what we will have done with it: educate and train first to master the technology, use it wisely and have the necessary distance to avoid making it the monster it could become.
Anti-manual of Artificial Intelligence: The new questions posed by AI, by Vladimir Atlani and Victor Storchan, Editions Eyrolles, 2024, 192 pages €22
Illustration : Canva
