This project aims at understanding how potential change-makers succeed in hostile contexts where their efforts should normally meet with failure owing to several reasons, including the nature of the context, the nature of the change, and the nature of the actors introducing the change. For understanding this paradox, we are examining the features, motivations, and strategies of pioneers of a practice (responsible investment funds) that was incongruent to the field into which it was introduced (financial services). These pioneers additionally had no legitimacy in a field where this was mandatory for success. Although the practice did undergo challenges in the early years, it later diffused and is currently endorsed by mainstream financial actors.

We are utilising the theoretical lens of neoinstitutionalism, which has a wealth of literature on institutional entrepreneurs (i.e. actors who introduce change), their efforts (particularly on how they specify the problem at hand, offer solutions, and justify these solutions), and organisational fields (i.e. the macro-level context in which the change is introduced). The empirical analysis is building on existing work on responsible investment funds and is utilising qualitative methods, drawing from archival resources and interviews and examining a timeline from 1925 until 1988.

It is expected that the project will provide tangible strategies for change-makers introducing socially and environmentally responsible practices in organisational fields or industries that are not receptive to such practices.

Duration: 09/2019 – 08/2022

Source: GFF