Redéfinir le dirigeant d’entreprise : le retravail de l’ethos collectif dans le discours de remise de diplômes de Faber

Abstract

This article analyses how Emmanuel Faber, CEO of Danone, redefines the image of the business leader in the graduation speech he gave at HEC in 2016. Faber promotes social justice and invites his audience to act for a better world. The strength of his speech lies in the way he constructs his message. The social actor analysis shows how he makes “the lower class people” exist discursively and associates them with an ethos of worker, whereas other business leaders are constructed as passive and negative. This analysis also shows how the address reworks the collective ethos of the business leader, thus contributing to the argumentative power of the speech. While Faber conforms to some aspects of the business leader's stereotype, he modifies the collective ethos in order to provide a redefinition of the business leader and of his role.

Keywords

• collective ethos
• Faber
• reworking of ethos
• social actor
• social justice