Morals, Markets and Sustainable Investments: A Qualitative Study of ‘Champions’

Lewis, Alan; Juravle, Carmen

doi:10.1007/s10551-009-0235-5

Cited by 47 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…He therefore finds evidence to suggest that these intermediaries engage in self-serving practices and thus fail in their duties to serve their clients' -i.e., pension funds' -best interests. Lewis and Juravle (2010), in their qualitative study of SRI champions, also identify short-termism as one of the key obstacles to ethical investment, but observe that for SRI to have a significant influence, greater government intervention is required.…”

Section: Sri In the Norwegian Context: The Norwegian Government Pensimentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes towards ethical pension management among Norwegians

Ditlev-Simonsen

Wenstøp

2016

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SammendragI denne studien har vi kartlagt nordmenns holdninger til etisk forvaltning av pensjonsfond som kan innebaere redusert pensjon. Vi studerer folks holdning til etikk angående eget pensjonsfond samt deres forestillinger hvilke holdninger andre har.Fokuset er på hvordan politisk partipreferanse og tilhørende verdier påvirke holdninger. Vi analyserer dataene med tre velkjente verdisystemer beskrevet av henholdsvis Inglehart, Welzel og Hellevik.Vi finner at 40 % sier de ville velge etisk investering selv om det betyr at deres egen pensjon vil bli redusert, mens 32 % sier nei. Det er uvisst hvor de 28 % som sier de ikke vet, vil ende opp, men dette kan tolkes som en generell positiv holdning i befolkningen til etisk pensjonsforvaltning.Holdningene er avhengig av verdier, og Helleviks verdisystem er en litt bedre indikator enn de andre. Funnene viser at viljen til å investere etisk øker med idealisme, venstreorientering og utdanningsnivå, og synker med inntekt. De samme verdiene er ikke relatert til folks oppfatning av hvordan de tror andre ville valgt når det gjelder villighet til etisk pensjonsforvaltning. Nøkkelord: Social Responsible Investment (SRI), pensjon fond, verdisystemer, holdninger, World Values Survey (WVS), Inglehart, Welzel, Hellevik, Petroleumsfondet utland AbstractWe have surveyed the attitudes of Norwegians toward ethical pension management that carries an opportunity cost. We study attitude regarding own pension fund as well as belief about other people's attitudes. Our findings show that 40% of the respondents claim they would choose ethical investment, even though it implies reduced pension. 28% would not choose ethical investment. It is unclear how those who say they do not know would end up, still the findings can be interpreted as a general positive attitude among people to ethical pension management.Attitudes depend on values, and Hellevik's value system is a slightly better predictor than the two other value systems. The findings show that willingness to invest ethically increases with idealism, leftist position and education level, and sinks with income. However, the values are not related to people's perception of other people's attitudes.

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Section: Sri In the Norwegian Context: The Norwegian Government Pensimentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes towards ethical pension management among Norwegians

Ditlev-Simonsen

Wenstøp

2016

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“…These behavioral studies form much of the research on why investors deviate from the value maximizing principle and incorporate other decision variables (such as extra-financial variables) into their investment decisions. For instance, Nilsson (2007) found that apart from financial return, social, environmental, and ethical issues are important determinants of investment while Lewis and Juravle (2009) found that investors are driven by a wide range of values. Other studies have found that having a negative ethical stance toward the stock market is a significant negative predictor of willingness to invest in stocks (Keller & Siegrist, 2006), that holding profit constant, people are willing to pay more for ethical shares (Hofmann, Hoelzl, & Kirchler, 2008) or accept lower financial returns for their investments in exchange for positive social returns (Glac, 2008), and that the strength of investors' personal values is important in determining their investment choices (Pasewark & Riley, 2009).…”

Section: Ethical Properties Of Investments As a Source Of Risk-reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Appearances: The Risk-Reducing Effects of Responsible Investment Practices

Laurel-Fois

2016

Business & Society

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This article examines the theoretical motivations underlying the conflicting beliefs in support of and against responsible investment (RI) and presents unique quantitative evidence to illustrate how such conflicting logics produce a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between screening intensity and two measures of risk. First, I argue that, whereas limiting the investable universe by using RI screening criteria increases the risk specific to the portfolio, very high screening intensity can reduce this risk. This is due to the fact that information benefits enable fund managers to be more selective, allowing them to select less risky firms. Second, by drawing on behavioral studies, I argue that this same curvilinear relationship occurs when examining the flow of money coming in and out of a fund. That is, high RI screening makes ethical investors "stickier" and less likely to pull money out of a fund because they are attracted to its ethical properties. I test my hypotheses using a data set of all known European RI screening equity mutual funds. I generally find strong support for both hypotheses. This has an important implication for investors: For high screening intensity and meaningful RI practices, RI is associated with a significant risk reduction.

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“…A vast amount of institutional investors around the world interpret the legislation surrounding fiduciary duty as precluding them from doing anything else than seeking maximum returns on investments. In a recent survey among American 145 Socially Responsible Investment and Fiduciary Duty pension fund trustees, for example, as many as 45% of respondents indicated that considerations of fiduciary duty were their main reason for not engaging more actively in SRI (Hess, 2007; see also Hesse, 2008;Juravle and Lewis, 2008;Kiernan, 2009;Lewis and Juravle, 2009).…”

Section: The Fiduciary Duties Of Institutional Investorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Being a form of trusts, institutional investors by law have socalled fiduciary duties towards their beneficiariesthat is, they are generally required to manage their funds in the best interest of the underlying owners or ultimate recipients of these funds. And many institutional investors argue that there is a conflict between their duties to their beneficiaries and the idea of taking ESG considerations into account (Hess, 2007;Hesse, 2008;Juravle and Lewis, 2008;Kiernan, 2009;Lewis and Juravle, 2009). While they personally may care about many social, ethical and environmental issues, some say for example that their fiduciary duties disallow them from attending to personal biases.…”

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confidence: 99%