This article looks at shareholder activism and the industry that has emerged around socially responsible investment, which has put pressure on publicly listed companies to comply with basic ethical and social standards. Socially responsible investment is a broad field with many points of connection and disconnection with corporate social responsibility (CSR). It would be natural to assume that socially responsible investment represents an implementation of CSR in financial markets, but many social investors have motivations very different from what one might call the academic view of CSR. Socially responsible investment has a long history, and many of its practices pre-date modern conceptions of social responsibility. Since studies of socially responsible investment are often cited in discussions of CSR, it is important to understand what is, and what isn't, being said. This article therefore begins by reviewing some basic definitional issues.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.