The governance of companies and organizations is confronted with an increasingly structuring public environment:

• the effect of public decisions in terms of social, fiscal, health, environmental or intellectual property standards is a determining factor of economic competitiveness,
• Ever since the onset of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 and the health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, the French government, similarly to most other developed countries, has built its political decision-making process by broadening and strengthening public consultation. The latter is now more upstream, more transparent, more structured, and involving, alongside public authorities, non-governmental actors, such as NGO representatives, professional organizations and scientific experts. The implementation of multiple recovery plans and new economic and financial regulations also marks a return to proactive public policies.
• The growing role of the effects of private opinions on public decision-making, on its image and on the qualitative recognition of its offer, complicates the relationship between the governance of companies and the public sphere – at all scales.
• The process of implementing a new decentralization strengthens the role of the major local officials and the institutional levels they represent, in particular on issues related to regional planning and development, economic development and job preservation.