Exploring the Intersection of Ethics, Profitability, and Social Impact in Modern Investing Strategies
Pressure to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) manifests in various forms, whether internally from shareholders or externally, due to public expectations for a corporation to contribute positively to the environment and society.
CSR is a business model that addresses societal and environmental needs while cultivating a positive corporate image through investments supporting prevalent causes or abstaining from investments in corporations perceived to harm society or the environment.
CSR encompasses subsets such as environmental and social governance (ESG) and faith-based investing or faith-consistent investing (FCI), integrating Christian values into investor decisions.
Some argue that CSR poses a challenge for corporations as it juxtaposes performance expectations against diverse stakeholders, including those prioritizing corporate profits and those viewing CSR as a moral obligation to society and the environment.
The conservative economist Milton Friedman famously asserted that the sole social responsibility of a business is to increase its profit, embracing social responsibilities would, in his view, breach fiduciary duties.
Despite Friedman’s arguments, clear and compelling evidence supports that Corporate Social Responsibility can benefit society and corporate investors.
However, CSR and ESG have become contentious issues for some major corporations, leading to open resistance, as evidenced in legal battles.
For instance, Exxon Mobil is suing two sustainable investment firms to prevent them from proposing a shareholder initiative to compel the oil company further to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and those of its customers. In a federal lawsuit filed in Texas in January 2024, Exxon Mobil alleged that the proposed actions by the investment firms would "diminish the company’s existing business" (Eaton & Kiernan, 2024).
ESG and CSR are integral to Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), also known as ethical investing, where investors incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria into their investment decisions (Dawkins, 2016). This allows investors to align their portfolios with their values. SRI utilizes ESG reports for investment screening.
Given some corporations' resistance to adopting CSR, ESG, or related concepts, investors can utilize positive and negative screening to guide their investment decisions, ensuring alignment with their values and beliefs.
SRI funds are crafted by screening publicly traded companies for specific ESG issues (Humphrey et al., 2015). Screens typically include negative and positive criteria (Delmas & Blass, 2009). Negative screens avoid "sin stocks" like alcohol, tobacco, firearms, gambling, and pornography (Kurtz, 2008; Mackey et al., 2020), and divesting from these holdings is common (Dawkins, 2016).
Positive screens, in contrast, focus on desired outcomes such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Environmental Social Governance (ESG) (Berry & Junkus, 2012).
Medium and advanced negative screens may involve issues like abortion, nuclear energy, uranium mining, violent video games and movies, fossil fuel use, child labor, non-compliance with the Kyoto Protocol or Paris Climate Accord, violation of Catholic Church doctrine, and human rights abuses (Escrig-Olmedo et al., 2013; Trinks & Scholtens, 2015; Louche et al., 2012; Berry & Junkus, 2012; Domini, 2001).
Medium and advanced positive screens aim to promote job security and healthcare, continuous employee education, fair pay, diversity and inclusion, equal opportunities, environmental policies, corporate philanthropy, board and director transparency, shareholder engagement, and fair-trade practices (Escrig-Olmedo et al., 2013; Berry & Junkus, 2012; Scholtens, 2015; Louche et al., 2012; Domini, 2001).
The effects of positive and negative screening on corporate behavior remain unclear.
A Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance study states, “Negative screening has increased in the recent decade. However, a more carefully matched sample approach suggests that the gap in institutional ownership between sin firms and other firms disappears after controlling basic firm fundamentals. Hence, some institutions may not hold sin firms due to intuitive fundamentals-based considerations rather than purely because of negative screening rules" (Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, Eccles et al., 2022).
The impacts of positive and negative screening on corporate behavior warrant further investigation.
Just as in the ExxonMobil case, the jury on ESG may be out. However, investors can clearly express their values through negative screens, guiding their investment choices while withholding support from corporations that do not align with their principles.
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