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This paper aims to conduct an empirical analysis of subnational laws of the USA that require public pension funds to divest from companies that are in business with Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan and explores whether public fund officials may be in violation of their fiduciary duty responsibilities toward pension system beneficiaries as they execute state-mandated divestment schemes.

A database search was conducted for specific federal laws, presidential executive orders, and departments, offices, and terminology relevant to the topic of the research to explore the extent by which states employ public pension divestment regimes inspired by the federal governments designation of the four countries labeled as state sponsors of terrorism. Quantitative and financial calculations were used to conduct the cost analysis of divestment laws.

Divestment laws are costly for the beneficiaries. In the majority of the states that have divestment laws, the public funds, rather than the states, must cover the losses associated with divestment, resulting in pension fund trustees and managers having to take action that are in violation of their fiduciary duty responsibilities.

The study recommends a major overhaul of the current divestment laws.

Divestment legislations must be revised as they cause a divergence of interests between state-driven political gestures, the fiduciary responsibilities of pension system trustees, and the financial interests of the beneficiaries.

This is the first study that recommends specific legislative action that would resolve the divergence of interests between state-driven political gestures, the fiduciary responsibilities of pension system trustees, and the financial interests of the beneficiaries.

This study aims to discover the role of accounting and media in hegemonic discourse for divestment valuation of PT Freeport Indonesia shares.

This study employs data from 608 news articles from 5 national media. This study uses Gramsci's concept of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to explore the ideological role of accounting in the formation of historical blocs and investigate the contestants' discursive strategies through the chains of equivalence and difference.

The incumbent presidential candidate, by involving political and intellectual actors, has succeeded in taking over and shifting PT Freeport Indonesia's hegemony to maintain its power, through the ideology of divestment and accounting. The media played a role in the victory of the pro-divestment bloc in the hegemonic divestment discourse contest. The pro-divestment bloc's discursive strategy uses more formal and technical language styles than the anti-divestment bloc, which uses informal language styles. The pro-divestment bloc uses the key signifiers of low price, improved financial performance, nationalization and welfare, as opposed to the anti-divestment bloc, with the key signifiers of high price, declining financial performance and neoliberalist colonization.

The implications of this research may encourage accounting academics to contribute to emancipatory social movements in the struggle for hegemony. The implication for policy makers is the importance of involving the public, intellectual actors, political actors and the media in supporting diverse state strategic policies in the national interest.

This paper contributes to Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to understand the role of accounting and media in a nationalization project as an emancipatory social movement, as well as a hegemonic shifting political movement.

From the 1960s onwards, students and members of the academic community on growing numbers of college and university campuses in the United States chose to confront the issue of apartheid by advocating divestment from corporations or financial institutions with any sort of presence in or relationship with South Africa. Student divestment advocates faced serious opposition from university administrators as well as opponents of institutional divestiture both at home and abroad. Despite these challenges, the academic community in the United States was one of the first arenas where anti-apartheid activism coalesced. This chapter examines the campaigns of students and educators who participated in the debate over divestment – to engage with the South African government and apartheid through dialogue and communication or to disengage completely from the country through withdrawal of financial investments. The anti-apartheid efforts of the academic community at Michigan State University, one of the first large research universities in the United States to confront the issue of apartheid and divestment at the university level and beyond, serves as a window to view academic activism against apartheid. The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC), a consortium of students, faculty, and community members dedicated to aiding the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, led the efforts at Michigan State and collaborated with allies across Michigan and the United States. SALC focused most of its efforts on South Africa, though the organization also confronted the issue of South Africa's controversial occupation of South West Africa and the ongoing civil war in Angola.

The purpose of this paper is to address the corporate governance implications of the US terror‐free investment screens, instituted both legislatively and voluntarily, on the operations of non‐US multinational corporations (MNCs) concerning international trade and foreign direct investment with nations designated as “State Sponsors of Terrorism.”

After a brief introduction to the issue of “terror‐free lists” and investment indexes and divestment screens, the paper summarizes the US Federal and State Laws pertaining to state sponsors of terrorism and their direct impact on international trade and investment transactions. The third section evaluates the success of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indexes and investment screens compared to standard market investment indexes. The fourth section discusses the potential effects of terror‐free stock indexes and divestment (“social”) screens on corporate governance of non‐US corporations. In the final section, the paper offers business policy recommendations concerning international trade and foreign direct investment decisions and the listing of equity stock on the US financial market exchanges, and offer scholarly research questions addressing this issue.

Non‐US MNC managers should recognize, first, the importance of global corporate citizenship and reputation; second, the expansion of terror‐free investing criterion in ESG investment indexes and divestment screens; and third, the growth in the number of state government prohibitions on investing funds with foreign MNCs complicit with terror‐sponsoring states.

Exploratory in nature, this seminal paper evaluates an issue of emerging importance to non‐US MNC managers and directors concerned with potential political and economic repercussions of their international trade and foreign direct investment decisions.

This paper aims to investigate the drivers of foreign direct divestment (FDD), how it relates to foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and stocks and its implications for developing countries. While divestment occurs for various reasons, it can be explained by reversing the propositions implied by FDI theories.

The authors combine FDI data and FDI theories to provide theoretical explanations for FDD and what it means for developing countries. FDI stock and flow data are used to derive inferences on trends in FDD and examine the implications of FDI theories on FDD.

Changes in the modes of global production and the rise of COVID-19 have reinforced the trend of stagnant or diminishing FDI flows observed since the global financial crisis, with implications for FDD. The authors demonstrate how the various FDI theories can be used to explain FDD, except for the currency areas hypothesis. By reviewing the costs and benefits of FDI, it is concluded that shrinking FDI flows and stocks may not be as detrimental for developing economies as it is typically portrayed.

The paper uses two original approaches to measure and explain the motives for FDD. The first is a reassessment of FDI theories in a way that makes them valid theories for FDD. The second original approach is to interpret data on FDI flows and stocks to imply the trends governing FDD, which is useful, as data on foreign divestment are not available on a country or regional basis.

This research uses the social science perspectives of institutions, ecological modernization and social movements to analyze the rationale used by the early-adopting universities of fossil fuel divestment in the USA.

Through analysis of qualitative data from interviews with key actors at the universities that divested their endowments from fossil fuels, the paper examines how institutions navigate competing logics and frame their rationale.

The results show that while many institutions relied on ecological values embedded in their missions to justify their decision to divest, many also continued to embrace an altered version of market logic.

This research is primarily limited by its small population size. If the number of adoptees increases in the future, quantitative analysis should look for statistically robust trends.

The implications of this research are that we can expect more universities to commit to divesting from fossil fuels if their mission statements provide them with cultural material to rationalize the decision, but also expect them to couch the decision in continued goals and concerns for fiduciary responsibility and the subsequent growth of their endowment.

Social actors engaged in the fossil fuel divestment campaign may take this research and conclude that they need to build their arguments around the existing institutional logics and cultural identity.

This paper contributes original primary data documenting how institutional actors confront dominant logics using both a mixture of internal cultural identity and the reframing of the legitimated market logics.

The management of a diversified corporation needs to be able to recognize new opportunities for profitable growth. And it also needs to know when one of its businesses is no longer compatible with long‐range growth plans. The symptoms may be a short‐term or long‐term lack of profit, a lack of fit, a need for cash, or a business with volatile year‐to‐year earnings that make it unattractive to Wall Street. However, once divestment comes into the picture, the first thing management needs to consider is, can the unit be sold without materially affecting its continuing lines of business.

This paper aims to investigate the divestment behavior of emerging market multinationals from Latin America – multilatinas – by examining how their foreign market entry decision impacts the likelihood of subsidiary divestment.

The hypotheses are tested using Cox’s proportional hazard rate model in a longitudinal database of Brazilian multinational companies established in 43 countries.

Results indicate that these subsidiaries can thrive in environments that bear similarities to their home country, being less likely to divest in institutionally weak countries. Contrary to developed country multinationals, these firms benefit from foreign entry decisions that entail handling partnerships abroad; thus, wholly-owned greenfield (WOGF) investments have a higher likelihood of being divested.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze foreign divestment from multilatinas, accounting for how entry mode strategy and host country institutions may impact these firms’ de-internationalization.