This article looks at France's Loi Toubon, which mandates the use of French in private companies, to illustrate how macro-level language planning reaches a dead end if it fails to consider local contexts and involve micro-level agents. The motivations, limitations and contradictions of France's language policy in relation to companies are discussed in view of the language planner's self-legitimizing discourse, which hinges on three themes: customer protection, employee protection and economic performance. Companies, we conclude, should be made to take responsibility for particular language issues rather than be coerced into complying with context-blind legislation. Drawing on this, we suggest an approach based on stakeholders' involvement and acknowledgement of what we propose to call a company's sociolinguistic responsibility.