Encouraging Investors to Enable Corporate Sustainability Transitions: The Case of Responsible Investment in France

This paper studies the case of the socially responsible investment (SRI) industry in France. This case accounts for how the SRI category and practices have successfully moved from the margins of the industry in the late 1990s to become mainstream over two decades. We bring to the forefront the importance of three complementary factors in the process of causing corporations to transition toward more sustainable businesses: the role of investors and, in particular, institutional investors; the importance of the presence of a clear category definition and of intermediary organizations, providing ratings, scores, and other calculative devices; and the role of governments and regulators. With other studies, this case stresses the fundamental influence of investors in how corporations manage sustainability transitions

Calculability as politics in the construction of markets: the case of socially responsible investment in France

This paper examines some of the processes by which power constitutes calculability and, in so doing, shapes the construction of markets. We combine insights from performativity studies about calculability with Lukes’ ‘radical view of power’ to investigate how multiple facets of power are mobilized to influence the creation and activities of calculative agencies in the process of market construction. An in-depth longitudinal study of the French socially responsible investment market shows how organizations acting as calculative agencies become sites of power through calculability. We identify how power is exercised over, through and against these calculative agencies by a variety of actors in order to build their position in the socially responsible investment market. Our results complement the broader question of the ‘government of economic life’ by showing how micro-level power games interact with the macro-politics of market building through calculative agencies. In so doing, our paper sheds light on neglected aspects of the changing geopolitics of calculative power in market construction and suggests approaching ‘calculability as politics’ when studying the construction of markets

Organising messages

About the book: This book continues to explore grammatical variation but focuses increasingly on developing a critical orientation to English use. You will be expected not only to describe, and interpret texts, but also to apply your grammatical knowledge and analytical skills as a means of judging and improving the communicative effectiveness of a range of everyday texts

Mistaking an Emerging Market for a Social Movement? A Comment on Arjaliès’ Social-Movement Perspective on Socially Responsible Investment in France

International audienceIn a recent contribution to this journal, Arjaliès (J Bus Ethics 92:57-78, ) 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 researc