probably because of the historical experience with Anglophone oppression. The common
response in Quebec was to resist liberal market economies and practices associated with them.
SRI originated in a liberal market economy and was therefore a practice that should be
resisted, an expectation that did not escape the CEO:
“I’m scared that people will say that I’m corrupt because I’m not choosing resistance.
When I presented the project to the board of the environmental organization that I was in
charge of, one of the board members said that he was not in favour of it. I asked why, and
he answered that, ‘well, okay, because you buy into the establishment’. He had strong
principles on this. He is anti-globalization, anti, anti, anti.” (CEO of FIR)
This citation shows that SRI was associated with the threat of liberal market economies.
The CEO responded to this situation with defusing. She associated SRI with sustainable
development and the World Summit in Johannesburg, distancing it from the United States and
other liberal market economies. She then reformulated SRI so that it mirrored the strategy
adopted during the Quiet Revolution, namely as a tool to restore social order and economic
autonomy: “Abuse, lies and exploitation of children make me really angry. I want to restore
justice, I want to change the power balance”. She defused the threat of liberal market
economies when she framed the adoption of SRI as an act of ‘empowering people for a
common social cause’. This strategy increased the desirability of SRI and facilitated the
transfer to Quebec.
The team that launched ARESE in the mid-1990 perceived threats to the development of
SRI in France. All the interviewed analysts who were employed at ARESE in its early stage
of development agreed that there was much uncertainty around SRI in France in 1997 and
1998. In fact, a market study conducted by the founder/CEO prior to the launch of ARESE
concluded that the French market was not yet ready for SRI. Among other factors, the
relatively small stock market in France was perceived as a threat to SRI because it was
unattractive for investors to pay for social and environmental information on only 40 or 120
firms, which was the size of the two main French financial indexes (respectively called ‘CAC
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