How Finance Regulates Trade Union Involvement in French SRI

Penalva-Icher, Elise

doi:10.1057/9781137033604_9

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Pension fund reforms in many countries have allowed unions to convert workers’ savings into financial assets managed by fund professionals, thus transforming workers into legal owners (Drucker, 1976; Hacker, 2004; Davis and Kim, 2015). As workers’ pensions were increasingly invested in corporations, unions gained influence over their policies and practices, which gave unions a reason to overcome their dislike for the financial sector and develop a relationship with it (Penalva-Icher, 2012). In December 2007, the largest international association of trade union organizations issued a statement on “Responsible approaches to the stewardship of workers’ capital” and urged “pension funds, their trustees, and fund managers to include in their investment decision-making process the impact, both positive and negative, of their investments on workers, communities and the environment” (TUAC, 2007).…”

Section: Competing and Complementary Logicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rise of Socially Responsible Investment Funds: The Paradoxical Role of the Financial Logic

Yan¹,

Ferraro

Almandoz

2018

Administrative Science Quarterly

128

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Socially responsible investing (SRI) is gaining traction in the financial sector, but it is unclear whether the dominant financial logic complements or competes with the social logic in the founding of SRI funds. Based on insights we gained from observation at an Asian SRI industry association, interviews with SRI professionals in the U.S. and Europe, and other fieldwork, we questioned explanations for SRI's conflicted relationship with the financial logic. Our observations prompted us to build a panel database of SRI fund foundings from 1970 to 2014 in 19 countries so that we could examine how a dominant logic interacts with alternative logics to promote or stifle institutional change. We decomposed the financial logic into interdependent dimensions as the provider of means (resources, practices, and knowledge) for novel financial ventures to be founded and the enforcer of profit-maximizing ends that constrain such foundings. Our theory suggests a paradoxical role for the financial logic, which explains an intriguing empirical finding: the founding of SRI funds has a curvilinear, inverted-U-shaped relationship with the prevalence of the financial logic. We propose and find that the relationship between the dominant financial logic and the social logic of SRI shifts from complementary to competing as the financial logic becomes more prevalent in society and its profit-maximizing end becomes taken for granted. We examined how certain alternative logicsthose of unions, religion, and green political parties-moderate these effects. Our results shed light on how and to what extent institutional change can occur in fields in which one institutional logic is dominant. They also reveal countrylevel institutional factors that drive SRI.

show abstract

Section: Competing and Complementary Logicsmentioning

confidence: 99%