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This study aims to study the impact of corporate governance (CG) versus ethical investment on the firm performance. It takes into account the firms of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan for the purpose of the study. A composite variable of CG index and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index is used to test the impact on the firm performance. Separate country wise and overall analysis is obtained. Regression analysis is used to obtain the results. Two measures of performance are used, one is return on assets (ROA) and other is Tobin Q. The findings of the study reveal that there is an impact of corporate governance index (CGI) on firm performance (overall and country wise) whereas ethical investment (EI) has an impact on firm performance when tested overall and no impact when checked for country wise results. The results further show that on country level, increase in CG measures may lead to positive results, but at the macro level, it may lower the performance. On the other hand, at the micro level, ethical finance may not show its impact; however, at the macro level, it has an impact. The study has implications for the investors and policymakers.

The study examines the diversity of ethical motivations for investments in fossil fuels amid growing calls to decarbonize. Faced with the dilemma between energy needs and net-zero commitments, managers need to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable external pressures. The purpose is to provide insights into the ethics justifying their investment decisions.

The authors draw on ethnographic research, participant observation and interviews with oil and gas executives, private equity partners, managing directors, bankers, lawyers, consultants and engineers in the US and the UK.

The findings show how managers in the oil and gas ecosystem motivate their actions in response to external pressures for decarbonization. The leitmotif is that they do the right thing even if they acknowledge that not all stakeholders agree. The findings provide insights into why net-zero pledges have failed to stem the flow of capital into fossil fuels.

The authors propose a nuanced engagement with stakeholders that goes beyond risk-return calculations on investments in hydrocarbons. Recognizing the diversity of ethical perspectives, money managers have the opportunity to engage institutional constituents as owners of the collective pools of capital rather than just as beneficiaries in making investment decisions.

Money managers should be more engaged with stakeholders whose well-being depends on the funds' investments. They could facilitate the creation of partnerships with public and private organizations such as banks, national funds, city governments, pension funds, foundations, universities and religious organizations. It would be beneficial to all stakeholders to understand the nuanced and varied ethical frameworks that inform hydrocarbon investment and divestment decisions.

The article uses timely in-depth interview data on an issue of existential importance. The authors contribute a better understanding of how and why institutional investor capital is flowing into hydrocarbons at a time when calls to divest are louder than ever.

This study aims to examine the value orientations of New Zealand agribusiness investors and how these orientations influence their reactions to the environmental and social implications of agribusinesses.

In the context of the New Zealand agricultural sector, the views of investors as published in print and broadcast media between 2018 and 2022 are gathered. The study uses qualitative content analysis to analyse the data. The study is based on the value-belief-norm theory.

The study reveals that New Zealand agribusiness investors express concern about the environmental (biospheric) and social (altruistic) impacts of the agribusiness sector, prompting calls for greater transparency, climate adaptation and ethical investment options. Additionally, they actively support local businesses to benefit their communities and preserve cultural heritage. Despite these biospheric and altruistic tendencies, investors also prioritise financial and non-financial interests (egoistic). This highlights a nuanced perspective guiding their investment choices – a balance between self-interest and contributing to the greater good. This signals a shift towards socially and environmentally responsible investment practices driven by multifaceted values.

The findings of this study highlight the role of non-pecuniary motives, like values, in determining the relevance of environmental and social information.

The study’s findings offer insight to agribusinesses on how investors’ value orientations shape their investment decisions. This understanding can guide businesses in framing a reporting strategy that enhances the likelihood of investors perceiving reporting as relevant and persuasive, thereby attracting more investments. In turn, this tailored reporting approach assists investors in making well-informed decisions in assessing the environmental and societal risks of agribusinesses.

The study offers a framework explaining how agribusinesses can increase the likelihood of investors finding firms reporting relevant and persuasive, leading to increased investments in environmentally and socially sustainable practices.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) is a niche and upcoming investment strategy in India. Very few researches have been conducted on SRI in the Indian context. This study identifies the SRI awareness level, attitude towards the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, willingness to invest in SRI avenues and obstacles in SRI investment decision-making by Indian retail investors. The second objective was among the awareness, attitude, willingness, obstacle, and demographic constructs to identify the most significant variables that impact an individual investor's SRI decision in India. .

Data for the study have been collected through a self-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics are used to identify the importance of variables for individual investors. This paper used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand the factors impacting individual investors' SRI behavior. Binary logistics regression analysis is used to recognize the variables that affect an individual investor's SRI decision.

The descriptive statistics indicate a low level of SRI awareness; the majority of the investors agreed that ESG issues are significant in investing and showed a willingness to invest in SRI avenues. However, the investors were not willing to accept lower returns from SRI. The majority of investors found, lower returns on SRIs, no tax benefit, lack of information about SRIs, and low liquidity as important obstacles in SRI investing. Binary logistics regression results indicated that awareness about SR/ESG indices, awareness about SR/ESG funds, and willingness to invest in SRI avenues significantly impact investors' SRI decisions but demographic variables have no significant impact on SRI decision-making.

This study has implications for the ethical/SR mutual funds managers, policymakers, government, and international asset management companies. The study finds an urgent need for increasing awareness about SRI among individual investors in India. The study suggests that the issuers must provide adequate information about SRI avenues and probable risk and returns involved in these, while the regulators must make efforts to educate investors in India.

The context of the present study is original because hardly any of the earlier studies conducted in India have tried to find out the individual investors' SRI awareness level, investors' willingness towards SRI, investors' attitude towards ESG issues, and obstacles faced by investors in socially responsible investing.

Sustainable investments (SI) represent a promising class of investments, combining financial returns with mitigating environmental challenges, achieving SDG goals and creating a positive business impact. An enhanced global focus on climate change developments in the backdrop of COP26 and COP27, raised the need for comprehensive literature mapping, to understand the emerging themes and future research arenas in this field.

The authors apply a quali–quantitative approach of bibliometric methods coupled with content analysis, to review 1,022 articles obtained from the Web of Science (WoS) database for 1991–2023.

The results identify the leading authors and their collaborations, impactful journals and pioneering articles in sustainable investment literature. The authors also indicate seven major themes of SI to be financial performance; fiduciary duty; CSR; construction of ESG-based portfolios; sustainability assessment tools and mechanisms; investor behavior; and impact investing. Further, content analysis of literature from 2020 to 2023 highlights emerging research issues to be SDG financing via green bonds and social impact bonds; investor impact creation via shareholder engagement and field building strategies; and governance related determinants of firm-level sustainable investments. Finally, the authors discuss the research gaps across these themes and identify future research questions.

This paper crystallizes research themes in sustainable investment literature using a vast coverage of globally conducted studies published in reputed journals till date. The findings of this study coupled with future research questions provide a well-grounded foundation for new researchers to further explore the emerging dimensions of this field.

This study examines the intersection of emerging Islamic economies and the digital economy in the context of the United Nations sustainable development goals (UN SDGs). This study aims to investigate the opportunities, challenges and barriers faced by emerging Islamic economies in the context of the digital economy. It specifically focuses on how these economies can contribute to the achievement of UN SDGs established in 2015. In addition, the study explores the prospects of Islamic digital finance and its potential to facilitate the adoption of the UN SDGs.

The following components outline the design, methods and approach of this study, identify and select specific UN SDGs that are relevant to the research aims. These selected goals serve as the basis for evaluating the impact of conventional and Islamic digital financial inclusion, gathered data from credible sources such as Bloomberg and Refinitiv Thomson Reuters to support the analysis. These sources provide comprehensive data on global indicators, progress and targets related to the UN SDGs, compare and evaluate the impact of both conventional and Islamic digital financial inclusion strategies on the selected UN SDGs; the study uses qualitative interpretation of the gathered data, which involves identifying patterns, themes and connections within the data to draw meaningful conclusions.

Results revealed that Islamic digital finance has the potential to contribute significantly to achieving the UN SDGs by promoting financial inclusion, encouraging ethical investments, supporting small and medium enterprises, promoting sustainable investments and leveraging technology to expand access to Islamic financial services and support sustainable investments.

While there are many potential benefits of Islamic digital finance in helping to achieve the UN SDGs, there are also several limitations that should be considered in research, such as limited access to digital infrastructure, regulatory challenges, product offerings, scale, awareness and adoption. Addressing these limitations will be critical to maximizing the potential of Islamic digital finance to contribute to achieving the UN SDGs.

This study points to an important gap in the literature; for practitioners, this study has significant managerial consequences for achieving the UN SDGs in emerging economies by facilitating social impact investments and promoting ethical and sustainable investments.

This study’s uniqueness lies in its exploration of the limited exploration of connecting the implementation of digital financial systems to promote UN SDGs within emerging Islamic economies.

International evidence of corporate demand for ‘aesthetic labour’ has stimulated a growing and important literature on the strategic, commercial, legal, gendered and ethical aspects of this labour process (see Spiess & Waring, 2005; Warhurst & Nickson, 2009; Warhurst et al., 2000; Waring, 2011; Witz et al., 2003). There is some evidence to suggest that the growth in ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ strategies and practices by larger firms provides a level of recognition of the need to avoid discriminatory practices based on the physical characteristics of employees whether these be overt, structural or as a result of unconscious bias. It is argued that the emergence of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ strategies are not just in response to regulatory demands or an enlightened ‘character over characteristics’ approach to hiring, but stems from a desire to meet contemporary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expectations. In turn this corporate motivation is frequently driven by commercial concerns such as the need to attract and retain capital and talent.

In this chapter, the intersection of aesthetic labour, appearance-based discrimination, corporate Diversity and Inclusion strategies and CSR is explored. Through the examination of Fortune 500 ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ strategies and approaches to CSR, the intent behind the resourcing of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ and its relationship to CSR is critically assessed. This critical assessment discloses both genuine efforts to reject unethical forms of ‘lookism’ or ‘appearance-based discrimination’ but also several contradictions. These include contradictions between the rhetoric of diversity and CSR and the continuation of aesthetic labour strategies for commercial advantage. Further, the research finds that the physical representation of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ efforts are sometimes themselves exploited for commercial gain.

This article studies the role played by sustainability operations management (OM) practices in the relationship between governance and environmental and social performance adopting the lenses of the upper echelons theory and the resource-based view. In particular, the authors study three main relationships: (1) the impact of governance on the implementation of sustainability OM practices, (2) the impact of sustainability OM practices on sustainability performance and (3) the mediating role of sustainability OM practices in the relationship between governance and sustainability performance.

To test this study’s research model, the authors retrieved secondary data of 430 firms from the United Stated (US) and Europe and analyzed it using partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study’s results suggest that sustainability OM practices are needed to achieve higher social and environmental performance outcomes from governance, highlighting the key role of the OM department in the achievement of a sustainability strategy.

This paper adopts the environmental, social, governance (ESG) neglected focus and aims to provide a better understanding of and reveal the interrelationship between governance and sustainability OM practices (i.e. environmental and social).

This study analyses the role of individuals' objective financial knowledge in shaping preferences for ethical intermediaries and sustainable investments in Italy. Another goal of this study is to assess the impact of individuals' misperceptions about their own financial knowledge and to test for gender-related differences in attitudes towards socially responsible investing (SRI).

Using nationally representative microdata from the Bank of Italy’s “Italian Literacy and Financial Competence Survey” (IACOFI), the authors use probit models, extended to account for potential endogeneity issues, to assess the causal effects of financial knowledge and confidence on stated preferences for SRI. Empirical models also allow to explicitly assess the moderating role of gender on the effects of financial knowledge and confidence on attitudes towards sustainable investing.

Results indicate that individuals' preferences for sustainable finance significantly increase with financial knowledge, suggesting that inadequate financial competencies represent a barrier to participation in SRI. At the same time, lack of confidence in one’s own financial knowledge significantly hampers attitudes towards sustainable investments. Furthermore, the authors show that women have a greater preference for sustainable finance than men and point out that financial knowledge and confidence exert heterogenous effects on attitudes towards SRI.

This study provides several contributions to the literature on SRI. First, the authors give evidence of the causal effect of financial knowledge on preferences for both ethical financial intermediaries and sustainable investments. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the role of financial underconfidence bias in shaping individuals' SRI attitudes. Finally, extending previous research, the authors assess differences in SRI preferences between women and men and provide novel evidence on gender-related heterogeneity in the effects of financial knowledge and underconfidence.

This study aims to test mutual fund superiority, comparing the performance of 646 Islamic mutual funds with 475 ethical funds and conventional proxies.

This study uses statistical methods including paired t-statistics of independent samples, one-way Bonferroni test–analysis of variance–F-statistic for testing means equality, the chi-squared test for median equality and regression models corrected for heteroscedasticity. These methods are used to identify superiority of mutual funds and to validate the significance of the results.

The findings confirm the superiority of conventional funds over ethical funds and ethical funds over Islamic funds. Both ethical and Islamic funds, however, outperform conventional proxies during some recessionary periods. Moreover, stronger performance is recorded for Islamic funds in Europe and North America regions and across age and asset allocation categories, but limited support for reversal fund size, composition focus and reversed price effect.

These findings should assist investors when deciding to invest and motivate Islamic and ethical funds to improve their portfolio formation and asset allocation strategies set by their professional managers.

The originality of this study is in its comprehensive approach in that it compares the performance of funds after accounting for such characteristics as fund objectives, size, age, asset allocation, geographical investment focus, fund composition focus, share price levels and the effect of global crises. This study approach is not only original and productive in documenting Islamic funds’ performance for the past three decades (1990–2022) but can also update the literature on these characteristics collectively and individually.