Framing ambiguity: insider/outsiders and the successful legitimation project of the socially responsible mutual fund industry
运用布迪厄的组织场域理论和社会运动的框架分析，研究社会责任共同基金行业如何通过内外部制度创业者巧妙利用模糊性框架，在不颠覆现有逻辑的前提下成功实现合法化。
This article uses a Bourdieuian notion of organizational field and social movement’s frame analysis to understand the successful legitimation project of the socially responsible (SR) mutual fund industry. We show how institutional entrepreneurs, as both insiders and outsiders of the dominant organizational field, compete with existing mutual fund logics and become a legitimate presence in the mutual fund industry. The SR mutual fund industry has grown exponentially since its introduction in the 1970s, even though the product it sells is ambiguous in nature (Wood, 2000). Thus, while the product could be perceived as subversive, as the SR industry is arguing that companies should act ‘responsible’ in their efforts to make money, the reality is that industry innovators do not disrupt the existing mutual fund logic of ‘fiduciary responsibility’ in order to legitimate themselves. Rather, SR institutional entrepreneurs use their social location in multiple organizational fields to argue that consumers can ‘make money while doing good’. Such a frame is not completely subversive nor completely compliant with the existing logic, yet it successfully appeals to both mutual fund insiders and social movement outsiders.