Social responsibility and the political: studying the politics of social responsibility in institutional investment

Abstract

The political aspects of social responsibility (SR) have been much debated in academia, but so far there has been little attention paid to how the political usage of SR discourse shapes everyday practices in organizations. The first purpose of this essay is to develop a framework based on post-foundational political thought and institutionalist approaches to SR in order to explain how the usage of SR discourse shapes activities in organizations. The second purpose is to demonstrate the application of this framework in order to analyse the politics of SR in institutional investment. This article first studies what kind of theoretical foci are provided by influential reviews in SR and socially responsible investment (SRI) literature. It then demonstrates, by means of a sample case study focused on Finnish pension insurance companies, how SR discourse can politically shape institutional investment practices. The findings suggest that SR discourse can politically shape investment practice by means of factors that would typically be excluded from explanation if studied on the basis of the literature reviewed.

Keywords:

• institutional investment
• institutional theory
• post-foundational political thought
• social responsibility
• socially responsible investment