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International audience; The current chapter shows that strategic corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) drives more pioneering socially responsible initiatives than responsive CSR based on "imitative" activities introduced to meet stakeholders' basic expectations. We conclude that strategic CSR leads to more sustainable financial performance as well as more socially and environmentally responsible innovation. We show that more diversity in top management positions could be a necessary requirement to shape more strategic CSR strategies. We present a critical survey of the literature structured in the following. First, we discuss the main features of CSR strategies and how they have evolved in the last years. Second, we shed light on the puzzled CSR-financial performance association. Then, we focus on the tools provided by strategic CSR to foster innovation potential of businesses and why we should rethink CSR to drive more sustainable innovations. Finally, the chapter discusses how hiring more diverse profiles in top positions could help to get out of the narrow CSR thinking and to go beyond stakeholders' expectations and reports' standards which could provide valuable opportunities to widen the innovation range in businesses through the implementation of more social, organizational and marketing innovations as well as the introduction of new products and processes.

International audience; The purpose of this paper is to study managerial involvement in decisions on innovation in the French context. The managerial aspect is explained by the prestige of the position of CEO. Few studies have addressed the determinants of research and development spending and the dimensions of innovation as organizational attributes. Most researchers have not considered the prestigious aspects of managers who are involved in the allocation of the firm’s research and development resources. The interest in this area is to strengthen the prestige power of the CEO in the management of innovative firms. Our empirical methodology is based on a sample of 153 French firms listed on the SBF 120 for the period from 2001 to 2013. We expect that the managerial characteristics will have a positive and significant effect on innovation evaluated by R&D spending. We reveal that the impact of managerial power is more noticeable on family firms, and that training encourages it to be more involved in product than process innovation.; Le but de ce papier consiste à étudier l’implication managériale sur la décision d’innovation dans le contexte français. L’aspect managérial est expliqué par le prestige de la position de direction. Peu d’études ont traité des déterminants des dépenses en recherche et développement et les dimensions d’innovation comme attributs organisationnelles. La plupart de chercheurs n’ont pas tenu en compte des aspects prestigieux des dirigeants qui sont impliqués dans l’allocation des ressources de l’entreprise. L’intérêt porté à ce sujet consiste à renforcer le pouvoir de prestige managérial dans la direction des entreprises innovantes. Notre méthodologie empirique est basée sur un échantillon composé de 153 entreprises françaises cotées du SBF 120 pour la période allant de 2001 à 2013. Nous prévoyons que les caractéristiques managériales auront un effet positif et significatif sur l’innovation évaluée par les dépenses en Recherche et Développement. Nous révélons que l’impact du pouvoir managérial est plus notable sur les entreprises familiales et que sa formation lui favorise d’être plus impliquée sur l’innovation produit que l’innovation de processus.

International audience; We study the impact of board gender diversity on firm risk‐taking in a developing market. Our study is drawn from a sample of 30 Tunisian‐listed firms between 1997 and 2010. First, we found that women have a risk perception that leads to risk avoidance behaviour: the presence of women directors, even when there is one woman director, is positively associated with cash ratio. Second, we showed no significant relationship between board gender diversity and the propensity to take strategic or financial risk‐taking. Third, the presence of state officer/bureaucrats and/or politically connected women have a positive effect on cash holding and investment opportunities. Finally, we found that foreign investors do not invest in firms with gender‐diverse boards. We conclude with a discussion of contributions to scholarship and practice, and present avenues for future research. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.