ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the early participants in SRI helped to frame some of the issues that activists and interested social investors were raising so that they would be accessible to the general investing public. Social movement theorists call this the framing process. SRI-supporting institutions such as the ones discussed inChapter 4 then emerged, tapping into what are called opportunity structures where they saw gaps between what is desired (by some actors) and current practice. Thus, as antiglobalization and anticorporate activismbegan growing in the 1990s, new standards of practice also began to evolve, broadening the sense of what it was companies — particularly multinational companies —must do to be considered responsible. Standards represent another aspect of framingwhere opportunities exist and the
institutions that have been built to support these standards represent new mobilizing structures: that is, new institutions that can push in the direction of meeting newexpectations for corporate behavior.Wehave already seen the evolutionof SAI out of the CEP, which is certainly one new standard. Another important breakthrough was the establishment of what became the Ceres Principles by difference maker Joan Bavaria and her collaborators, including eventual Ceres director Bob Massie.
