This study investigates the institutional work that underlies the diffusion of responsible investment (RI) and enhances its adaptation to local settings. Building on institutional theory and actor–network theory, we advance the concept of contextualization work to describe the institutional work that sustains RI glocalization. Empirical data from two case studies highlight how entrepreneurial actors imported the notion of RI from the US to France and Québec. Our findings uncover three types of contextualization work—filtering, repurposing, and coupling—that sustain RI glocalization, and (...) show how actors employed them in both settings to overcome the lack of technical, cultural, or political fit between the imported practice and their local context. Our results explain how divergent glocalized versions of RI are developed and adapted through contextualization work. Last, we discuss how our repertoire of contextualization work can account for local forms of a global concept and the uneven pattern of its diffusion. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to this journal, Arjaliès (J Bus Ethics 92:57—78, 2010) suggests that the emergence of socially responsible investment (SRI) in France can be best described as a social movement with a collective identity that aimed to challenge the dominant logic of the financial market. Such an account is at odds with a body of empirical studies that approaches SRI in the French context as a process of market creation led by loosely coordinated actors with contradictory and conflicting (...) interests and values, who have mainly complied with—rather than opposed—the existing dominant financial logic of the asset-management field. In this comment, we build on this prior research to contest Arjaliès' perspective on both theoretical and empirical grounds, with the aim of highlighting the shortcomings of conflating social movements and other forms of collective actions in understanding the building of new markets in organization theory and SRI studies. We contend that in mistaking for social movement forms of collective actions that underpin the emergence of markets, scholars of organization theory may confuse distinct mechanisms in their explanation of SRI emergence across countries, overlook the complex dynamics and interactions of markets and social movements, and, most importantly, fail to evaluate the real political significance of SRI as an empirical phenomenon. We propose that future research on SRI distinguishes carefully "social-movement research as a theoretical framework" from "social movement as an empirical phenomenon" in order to avoid such drawbacks while benefiting from recent advances in social-movement research. (shrink)

This study discusses how social movements can influence economic systems. Employing a political-cultural approach to markets, it purports that 'compromise movements' can help change existing institutions by proposing new ones. This study argues in favor of the role of social movements in reforming economic institutions. More precisely, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) movements can help bring SRI concerns into financial institutions. A study of how the French SRI movement has been able to change entrenched institutional logics of the French asset management (...) sector provides wide-ranging support for these arguments. Empirical findings are drawn from a longitudinal case study (1997-2009), based on participative observation, interviews and documentary evidence. Implications for research on social movements, institutional change and SRI are outlined. Lastly, the study provides practitioners with some theoretical keys to understand the pros and cons of 'SRI labels'. (shrink)