Mistaking an emerging market for a social movement? A reply to Arjaliès' social movement perspective on socially responsible investment in France

Frédérique Déjean, Stéphanie Giamporcaro (), Jean-Pascal Gond (), Bernard Leca and Elise Penalva-Icher
Additional contact information
Frédérique Déjean: LIRSA-CRC - LIRSA. Centre de recherche en comptabilité - LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM]
Stéphanie Giamporcaro: CERLIS - UMR 8070 - Centre de recherche sur les liens sociaux - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Jean-Pascal Gond: LIRHE - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les Ressources Humaines et l'Emploi - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Bernard Leca: Pôle Finance Responsable - Rouen Business School - Rouen Business School, IAE Lille - IAE Lille University School of Management - Lille - Université de Lille, Pôle Entrepreneuriat et Innovation - Rouen Business School - Rouen Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In 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 research

Keywords: Socially responsible investment; Institutionalization; Financial markets; Comparative studies; Social-movement research as a theoretical framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Business Ethics, 2013, Vol. 112 (n° 2), p. 205-212. ⟨10.1007/s10551-012-1241-6⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00779797

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-012-1241-6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().