Practicalities bottleneck to pension fund responsible investment?

Sievänen, Riikka

doi:10.1111/beer.12048

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…More broadly, evidence of lack of investor experience in responsible investment is also found in a study by Sievanen (), who discovers that key decision makers face difficulties in defining RI in practice and implementing it at the individual and organizational levels.…”

Section: Challenges To the Effective Monitoring Of The Corporation: Ementioning

confidence: 70%

“…Therefore, the preferences and obstacles faced by investors are difficult to observe. Since the challenges to institutional investor stewardship are relatively unexplored (Sievanen, ), in‐depth qualitative interviews served as an appropriate research methodology (Strauss & Corbin, ). In addition, given that the research is exploratory in nature and seeks to identify a variety of factors that have an impact on active ownership, the qualitative method surpasses the problems of categorical imposition typical of survey research and represents respondents’ views more accurately (Alvesson & Deetz, ).…”

Section: Qualitative Research Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, I contribute to the work of Juravle and Lewis () who created a framework identifying impediments to responsible investment (RI) on three levels: institutional, organizational, and individual, by providing empirical evidence for the existence of some of these challenges and by expanding the framework through discussing impediments not previously observed in the literature. Fourth, the study offers a broader perspective on challenges to action across different types of investors, thus expanding Sievanen's () work which has a specific focus on pension funds. Moreover, the study has practical implications as it provides information which could aid policy makers in designing incentives for RI.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…As a result, active ownership has seen a rise—in a recent study, Kolstad () reports a change in institutional investors’ approach toward engagement as a preferred SRI strategy. Similarly, citing data from Eurosif (), Sievanen () indicates that, not only has responsible investment grown substantially, but more than 90% of the RI market comprises investments by institutional investors. A report published by Citi?s Financial and Strategy Group in 2013 describes shareholder activism as “a sweeping trend that has spread to companies in all sectors and of all sizes, and increasingly, across all geographic regions” (Khorana et al, , p. 1).…”

Section: Institutional Ownership and Activism—rise And Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Institutional investors as stewards of the corporation: Exploring the challenges to the monitoring hypothesis

Ivanova

2017

Business Ethics: A European Review

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The study explores the challenges UK-based institutional investors face when trying to monitor investee companies and influence their social, environmental, and governance practices. Consistent with previous research, I find that misalignment of interests within the investment chain and dispersed ownership are factors which inhibit investor activism. However, other underexplored challenges include lack of investee company transparency and investor experience in activism, as well as low client demand for engagement and internal conflicts of interest. The results contribute to the literature on institutional investor activism by using direct empirical evidence to systematically discuss the challenges to stewardship. Given the intensification of media and regulatory attention on shareholders in the post-global financial crisis era, coupled with investors' growing awareness and practice of stewardship, the research opens new avenues for enquiry which go beyond the on-going debate about the monitoring versus short-termism roles of institutional investors. | INTRODUCTIONThe global

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Section: Challenges To the Effective Monitoring Of The Corporation: Ementioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Qualitative Research Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Institutional Ownership and Activism—rise And Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Institutional investors as stewards of the corporation: Exploring the challenges to the monitoring hypothesis

Ivanova

2017

Business Ethics: A European Review

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“…Such an agenda would also substantially expand a responsible investment literature, which has so far had an emphasis on financial performance (Capelle‐Blanchard & Monjon ; Sievänen ; Revelli & Viviani ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Three questions about engagement and exclusion in responsible investment

Kolstad

2015

Bus Ethics Eur Rev

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There is a move towards more use of engagement strategies in responsible investment. This change in strategies is motivated by a number of claims about the effectiveness of engagement versus exclusion of companies from the investment universe (the set of investment objects available to an investor). This paper examines the basis for three central claims: (1) That engagement, in contrast to exclusion, does not reduce the investment universe; (2) That exclusion reduces an investor's influence on a company; and (3) That engagement with exclusion is necessarily a more effective means of influencing companies than pure exclusion. All three claims are argued to be open to challenge. It is possible that the move towards more engagement reflects bureaucratic incentives and political considerations among institutional investors, rather than arguments about the effectiveness and efficiency of engagement.

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Assessing mutual funds’ corporate social responsibility: a multistakeholder-AHP based methodology

et al. 2016

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García-Melón, M.; Pérez Gladish, BM.; Gómez-Navarro, T.; Méndez Rodriguez, P. (2016). Assessing mutual funds' corporate social responsibility: a multistakeholder-AHP based methodology. Annals of Operations Research. 244(2):475-503. doi:10.1007/s10479-016-2132-5. 1Running head: SRI multi-stakeholders ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 AbstractThere are an increasing number of individual or corporate investors who demand Social Responsibility (SR) to a financial asset. Social responsibility is a multi-dimensional concept that requires identifying a number of criteria and their weights to be assessed in a financial asset. Currently a varied discussion is held among practitioners and academics with respect to this question. The common practice is to equally weight all the social responsibility criteria. However, investors may wish to prioritize a particular dimension depending on their preferences. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to tackle this issue, e.g. to provide different weights for the different SR criteria according to the opinion of different stakeholders. These weights are later used in order to build a composite measure of social responsibility and to rank mutual funds.To that end, Vigeo's list of social responsibility criteria is taken as the starting point for discussion. The Equitics® database gives the information for the companies' social responsibility performance according to those criteria. Stakeholders are selected according to various proposals and the Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied to weighting the Vigeo's criteria according to the stakeholders' preferences. The methodology allows not only assessing the financial assets but also tracking their evolution with the periodic Equitics® database updates.To prove the feasibility and utility of the methodology, a case study analysing Spanish equity mutual funds has been carried out. Among other results, the method shows that the so-called "responsible" funds do not perform particularly well in the social responsibility assessment. Besides, we have found that there are few mutual funds with a good balance between financial and social responsibility behaviour.

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Practicalities bottleneck to pension fund responsible investment?

Cited by 18 publications

References 86 publications

Institutional investors as stewards of the corporation: Exploring the challenges to the monitoring hypothesis

Institutional investors as stewards of the corporation: Exploring the challenges to the monitoring hypothesis

Three questions about engagement and exclusion in responsible investment

Assessing mutual funds’ corporate social responsibility: a multistakeholder-AHP based methodology

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