Christophe Revelli

Financial performance of socially responsible investing (SRI): what have we learned? A meta‐analysis

With a meta-analysis of 85 studies and 190 experiments, the authors test the relationship between socially responsible investing (SRI) and financial performance to determine whether including corporate social responsibility and ethical concerns in portfolio management is more profitable than conventional investment policies. The study also analyses the influence of researcher methodologies with respect to several dimensions of SRI (markets, financial performance measures, investment horizons, SRI thematic approaches, family investments and journal impact) on the effects identified. The results indicate that the consideration of corporate social responsibility in stock market portfolios is neither a weakness nor a strength compared with conventional investments; the heterogeneous results in prior studies largely reflect the SRI dimensions under study (e.g. thematic approach, investment horizon and data comparison method).

Logique d’encastrement de la finance dans l’éthique

This article aims to provide a critical analysis of socially responsible investment (SRI), through debate and reconstruction. This paper explains what is the real role of ethics and social issues within the different components of current SRI. Faced with the reality of the loss of ethical identity especially through the concept of ESG integration, this work proposes a model that re-embeds the financial issues within ethical values within the meaning of Polanyi (1983).

A Critical Analysis of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI): Meta-Debate and Development Perspectives

Abstract Purpose The aim of this chapter is to propose a critical analysis of socially responsible investing (SRI) through debate and reconstruction. Our goal is therefore to try to understand how the definition of ethics in finance has steered SRI towards a financial approach where ethics is guided by finance. Methodology/approach This chapter proposes a two-point approach consisting of a meta-debate and development perspectives. Each approach is divided into three debates (ideological and philosophical, scientific and practical), which are interconnected. Findings The chapter concludes that the debate on mainstream SRI is necessary but should be re-discussed, as it is preventing in its current form the concept from developing and being grounded in real ethical values, sacrificing the individual ethics that should be driving investing decisions. Originality/value The chapter proposes to rethink the paradigm around SRI through a conceptual framework that re-inserts finance within ethics, where non-financial performance and impact investment should be at the centre of the scientific debates, leading to an SRI based on exclusion, the consideration of controversies and social impact measurement.