Relaxing the territorial trilemma: Corporate territorial responsibility as a lever for capabilities in outermost regions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18559/rielf.2026.1.4241Keywords:
corporate territorial responsibility, outermost regions, proximity, territorial capabilities, territorial resilienceAbstract
Purpose: To reconceptualise corporate territorial responsibility (CTR) as a conversion mechanism producing collective territorial capabilities, thereby supplying the agentive operator missing from theories of regional resilience and collective capabilities, in the context of outermost economies.
Design/methodology/approach: Conceptual theory-building through systematic abductive combination of Polanyian embeddedness, the economics of proximity, the theory of the commons and the capability approach. The model links four situated forms of CTR to four transformative mechanisms and five capabilities, deriving five falsifiable propositions, and is complemented by an exploratory empirical component a reproducible CTR index architecture and a quasi-experimental design based on cyclone Chido and by process tracing across Martinique, French Guiana and Mayotte.
Findings: CTR operates as a re-embedding mechanism converting local resources, proximity and cooperation into productive, organisational, institutional, ecological and resilient capabilities; their combination is super-additive through supermodular complementarity. A bounded resource-trilemma analogy frames CTR as the lever that relaxes the external-integration / social-convergence / productive-autonomy constraint.
Originality/value: The article transforms CTR from a descriptive typology into a micro-founded causal mechanism, equips it with an emergentist micro-foundation that avoids reifying the territory, with a falsifiable grammar and a reproducible measurement architecture for the six French outermost regions.
JEL Classification Codes
Corporate Culture • Diversity • Social Responsibility (M14)
Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis • Housing • Infrastructure (O18)
Environment and Development • Environment and Trade • Sustainability • Environmental Accounts and Accounting • Environmental Equity • Population Growth (Q56)
Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes (R11)
Regional Development Planning and Policy (R58)
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