Bonduelle: How Powerful Dialogue Can Ensure All Voices Are Heard

Making decisions that benefit all people, communities and the planet is one of the core principles of the B Corp movement. To rethink the role of business, all B Corps are required to change their legal articles to embed purpose into their organization and ensure they consider their impact on all stakeholders – including, but not limited to shareholders. But what does this mean in practice, especially for large multinationals? As part of a collective call to action for all business leaders, investors and policy-makers to embrace this way of doing business, B Lab sat down with the B Movement Builders to understand what adopting these governance frameworks means to them.

Why is it important for Bonduelle to adopt this commitment to Stakeholder Governance?

Here at Bonduelle, we believe that doing business in a way that balances people, planet and profit is possible and desirable. That’s why we have set ourselves the goal of becoming a B Corp certified company by 2025. More than just a certification, B Corp is a process of progress to transform all areas of our organization. Engaging into the B Corp journey helps us become better for the world in everything we do by providing proof of our commitment to all our stakeholders.

How have the framework, tools and lessons from the B Corp movement supported your commitment to Stakeholder Governance?

Stakeholder governance is an essential part of the B Impact Assessment and shows us the way to improve our dialogue with our ecosystem through the very instrumental exercise of materiality analysis, for example. This materiality enables us to regularly question our stakeholders in our different geographical areas to ensure that we are in line with their expectations. It also formalizes a good practice that we have long been developing within our organization.

What does Stakeholder Governance look like in practice for Bonduelle?

We have structured a global approach based on dialogue and regular exchanges with our internal and external stakeholders through our materiality analysis. This approach engages us in all aspects of our business and encourages us to improve in order to carefully listen and ultimately meet our stakeholders' expectations. Once we have identified the most important topics by geographical area, we check that they resonate with our positive impact strategy. In doing so, we ensure that stakeholder expectations are heard and understood, and that we are committed to transforming the company and ensuring that it achieves its ambition of positive impact.

What impact do you expect this will have in the short and long-term for your business?

Committing to stakeholder governance is a way for us to continue to act to align our business with society's interests and create long-term sustainable value for all. In the short term, we committed to support B Lab's stakeholder governance principles by generating powerful dialogue about the best ways to do business, putting stakeholder governance at the heart of our concerns. In the long term, we believe that as a multinational company, we have a role to play in calling on more companies and investors to embrace stakeholder governance principles and adopt them within their organizations.