Stowing also facilitated the transfer of SRI to Quebec. FIR was launched shortly after
the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in August 2002. The
World Summit carried momentum as a social movement for environmental protection and
was drawing political attention around the world. The CEO, who attended the meeting in
Johannesburg, saw an opportunity for stowing in this movement. She adopted the Life Cycle
Approach, a tool for calculating the pollution that a product generates during its life cycle.
Although she was already familiar with this approach beforehand, she adopted it after the
Johannesburg meeting for two reasons. One reason was its functionality for the purpose at
hand:
“I first heard about the Life Cycle Approach two years ago, but I did not explore it that
much. Now I am facing a real problem because sustainable development is really huge.
People tell me ‘it can mean anything’, so I asked myself which tool I can use to avoid
that. I want to be able to explain why we say yes, why we say no. And the Life Cycle
Approach is rigorous. It is a model and when you apply it, you definitely do sustainable
development. You prevent problems.” (CEO of FIR)
Another reason was that it was gaining momentum as a new standard: “The Life Cycle
Approach did not exist at Rio. It started at Johannesburg. And it is great because it is now a
movement and it is clear that it will become a standard.” She benefited from this movement of
standardization and the World Summit to facilitate the transfer of SRI to Quebec.
Defusing
Defusing is a response to a pending threat in the host society. Individuals engage in defusing
when they transfer a practice to protect against a widely accepted threat, whether real or
perceived. If a business practice has proved successful elsewhere, then it raises hope that it
can alleviate problems in the host society. Once the business practice is perceived as useful, it
becomes valuable and attractive, which facilitates its transfer.
In Quebec, the rise of multinational companies on the global market represented a threat
to the local economy. Liberal market economies were perceived as a destructive force,
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