Socially responsible investment (SRI) has experienced strong growth in recent years. In 2012, $1 out of every $9 US assets under professional management was invested in some form of sustainable investment. Global sustainable investment assets have expanded dramatically, rising from $13.3 trillion at the outset of 2012 to reach a total of $21.4 trillion at the start of 2014. Most of the SRI assets are in Europe (63.7 percent), but the relative contribution of the United States has increased from 28.2 percent in 2012 to 30.8 percent in 2014, and over this two-year period, the fastest growing region has been the United States, followed by Canada and Europe. These three regions are also the largest regions in terms of assets, accounting for 99 percent of global SRI.With this growth one most important issues is whether it pays for organizations to concern themselves with social responsibility, and whether there are any tradeoffs to sustainable investing. Much of the present research on this question is based on the views of Friedman and Freeman. But changes in economic development, national and local security, and the growing expectations of stakeholders influence how social performance is defined, and thus corporate performance as well.The aim of this article is to examine correlations between CSR and financial corporate performance, based on empirical studies conducted by other authors in different countries. In total, the analysis comprises 53 studies and the results obtained for 16,119 companies.

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An increasing number of investors want to invest their capital not only with profit but also responsibly, and they pay significant attention to the formula of socially responsible investing (SRI), which means that they consciously engage their funds in companies operating in accordance with CSR principles. An important influence on the development of CSR is the role of stock exchange indices on socially responsible companies. These indices can be considered specific tools for adapting this concept in practice, in particular in the field of socially responsible investment. This article provides a comparative analysis of the social, environmental and governance criteria underlying the definition of the composition of selected European SRI indices. The research will cover the following indices: the DJSI Europe Index, the FTSE4Good Europe 40, the FTSE4Good Europe 50, the EURO STOXX Sustainability 40 and the Solactive Sustainability Index Europe. This paper also intends to set an index reflecting the degree to which companies of certain European countries are represented in major European SRI indices. Consequently, global and national initiatives and ratings were excluded, as well as sector‑and industry‑specific initiatives and ratings. The proposed index is standardized by introducing the GDP of each country into the calculation formula as a way to a achieve comparable result. We believe that the proposed metric will reflect the state of the art in SRI and provide an overall picture of SRI practices across nations.