Socially Responsible Investing in Germany: A Typology of Legitimation

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Social Responsibility

Abstract

Socially responsible investment is a young and heterogeneous field within the financial markets without a clear definition. In this article, we use a hermeneutic analysis of webpages of socially responsible investment vendors in German-speaking Europe in 2011 to examine what draws investors’ attention to this niche in the financial market. We delineate three ideal types of socially responsible investment which balance the demands of two different institutional logics. While some vendors (moral type) correspond to the institutional logic of sustainability others are closely related to the logic of conventional financial markets (economic type) or respond to the growing trend of sustainability (reacting type). While specific vendors can be assigned to ideal types to some extent, we found, however, that these types were frequently mixed within the German-speaking field of socially responsible investment. Socially responsible investment organizations in German-speaking Europe are not structured homogenously but rather assemble in a highly diverse field.

Authors

• Stefanie Hiss, University of Jena

• Sebastian Nagel, University of Jena