We live in a new era with contradictory views on society, industries, and the whole world. Raising consumerism is compensated by raising the responsibility of the new generation, the so-called Millennials. The paper deals with the awareness of Millennials of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and their attitude to sustainable and responsible investment (SRI). The research is focused specifically on students of economically oriented higher education institutions (HEI), studying in the Czech Republic. For the purpose of general awareness of the term CSR, a sample of 1073 HEI students from different institutions was analyzed and evaluated. For the evaluation of their attitude to SRI, 213 respondents from Mendel University in Brno were interviewed. The research brought surprising results—bachelor’s degree students have a better awareness of the term than master’s degree students. This surprising fact can be explained by the fact that CSR courses have been incorporated into studies in recent years. Another important finding from the second research is that 57% of respondents are willing to sacrifice part of their return in the case of an investment in socially responsible instruments. This fact can be used for the design of an investment strategy offered by investment institutions.

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THE FUTURE OF INVESTING-SUSTAINABLE AND RESPONSIBLE INVESTING The objective of this paper has been the comparison of the selected sustainable and responsible funds in the aspect of positive and negative selection, and also the identification of attitudes of the selected millennials to SRI investing (focusing on environmental, social and governance factors). The approaches to define the methods of selecting investment instruments were analysed and systematized by the authors. The systematized scientific literature allowed to establish that sustainable investing, focusing on environmental, social and governance factors (ESG), addresses not only healthy corporate behaviour, but often keeps the capital safe. Selected funds from the Barron's Magazine and the data from the Bloomberg's ESG Data Service have been used as the source data. It has been established from the available screened data that there are two funds focusing on positive selection in the environmental, social and governance areas. None of these funds is focused explicitly on negative selection only. In the ESG areas, positive selection and/or combination of positive and negative selection has its firm place. Negative choice, however, is applied predominantly within products. With respect to intergenerational differences in the investment approaches, a particular group of millennials, FBE MENDEL students, and their attitudes and views concerning the SRI has been monitored. The research has been performed in the form of an online questionnaire survey, where 96 bachelor-degree students have been engaged, 68 women and 28 men. The following nationalities are included among the respondents: Czech (69), Slovak (21), Russian (3), Ukrainian (1), Belarusian (1) and Kazakh (1). It has been established that the expected return would still prevail over sustainability and social responsibility in case of their own selection of the investment instrument, however, if the SRI investment option is offered, for example, by an investment adviser, the majority of the respondents would be willing to use this investment instrument even at the expense of a lower return.

The present paper focuses on corporate social responsibility in public administration. The subject of interest is the South Moravia Region and enterprises seated there. The subject of the present research includes overall awareness of the inquired enterprises about corporate social responsibility and activities of the South Moravian Region Authority related to corporate social responsibility of the institution. The research has brought conclusions testifying a certain level of knowledge of the CSR concept among enterprises, albeit on the basic level only. The awareness of socially responsible activities of the regional authority was very low and therefore further steps of this institution must be considered to improve communication of CSR activities and develop an environment for better cooperation of the public and the private sector in this area. The research was based on secondary data drawn from annual reports of the South Moravian Region Authority and on primary data obtained by questionnaire-based inquiry among 384 enterprises doing business in the South Moravia Region.

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