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Purpose: Ethical investing is considered to be the pinnacle of embedding environmental considerations in investing. Environmental considerations form a major part of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR is considered to have a positive effect on investment returns. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the degree of environmental considerations embedded in faith-based funds investment criteria. The comparative analysis between principles and practice through faith-based investing is undertaken.

Design/Methodology: Prospectuses of selected faith-based mutual funds and other information around investment strategies provided on the Funds’ websites have been analyzed in detail. Content analysis has been undertaken in order to evaluate the existence and types of environmental related criteria demonstrated by the Funds. The criteria are compared to the faith principles on environmental responsibility.

Findings: It is generally assumed that CSR requirements form the premise of socially responsible investing. The authors find that faith-based investing criteria are narrowly defined and that they represent biases which do not promote environmentally responsible investing.

Implications: The major implication is that inspite of the availability of faith-based environmental responsibility principles, faith-based funds represent a case of economic returns prioritization over environmental considerations. Environment accountability principles that exist need to be promoted regularly so that they become an essential element of every day decision-making including faith-based economic decision-making.

Originality: This study contributes to the debate on ethical investing from the perspective of faith-based mutual funds.

This chapter focuses on restorative/rehabilitative faith-based programs, in particular, a youth mentoring program conducted by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. We begin with a brief description of a faith- and community-based juvenile mentoring program of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (which we are in the process of evaluating) intended to provide community reintegration and restoration of adjudicated delinquents released from state juvenile correctional facilities. Then we move to the overlapping theoretical, philosophical, and empirical backgrounds of restorative justice, faith-based rehabilitative/restorative, and mentoring programs. We conclude with a review of programmatic and empirical issues in faith-based mentoring programs.

This paper seeks to determine whether significant differences exist between secular and faith‐based hospitals in terms of specific mission statement components and mission‐related performance variables.

A total of 130 top managers from a sample of 515 Canadian hospitals responded to a comprehensive questionnaire investigating 23 mission statement components and seven mission performance outcome measures. Data were analyzed using frequency analysis, one‐way analysis of variance, MANOVA, chi‐squared and Mann‐Whitney U tests.

The analysis showed that differences in mission content exist between different types of hospitals, and that these differences form a pattern of sorts within each type. It was also found that faith‐based hospitals out‐perform their secular counterparts in many ways.

The research and its findings are limited in their application to relatively large Canadian health care organizations and the responses/opinions given by managers from a hospital's senior echelons.

The results have implications for all health care organizations interested in improving the results in their mission performance scorecard. The findings both confirm the impact that mission statements can have on selected hospital performance indicators and demonstrate that faith‐based hospitals have been more diligent in taking advantage of them.

This is the first paper to show that specific and significant differences exist between the mission statements of secular and faith‐based hospitals and that those differences are associated with hospital performance. These findings will be of special interest to senior hospital administrators and “directors of mission” within faith‐based institutions.

While service inclusion principles raise the awareness of scholars to service that improves holistic well-being, little research explicitly investigates the spiritual dimensions of service inclusion. This study, therefore, aims to explore faith-based service inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa.

A qualitative case study of the Salvation Army’s Chikankata Services in Zambia was undertaken. Semi-structured interviews with the organization’s leaders and professionals were analyzed thematically.

Service inclusion pillars evince contextualized meaning and priority. In resource-constrained, vulnerable communities, faith-based service inclusion prioritizes two additional pillars – “fostering eudaimonic well-being” and “giving hope,” where existence is precarious, fostering (hedonic) happiness is of low priority. Findings reveal that pillars and processes are mutually reinforcing, harnessed by the individual and collective agency to realize transformative outcomes from service inclusion.

This paper provides unique insight into faith-based service inclusion but acknowledges limitations and areas warranting further research.

The study yields important managerial implications. Service providers can use the framework to identify the contextual priority and/or meaning of service inclusion pillars and relevant reciprocal processes. The framework emphasizes the harnessing potential of individual agency and capability development for transformative well-being.

Faith-based service inclusion, predicated on inclusion, human dignity and holistic well-being, has important implications for reducing the burden on scarce resources while building resilience in communities.

By examining a faith-based service in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper provides a holistic framework conceptualizing pillars, processes, agency and outcomes to extend Fisk et al.’s (2018) service inclusion pillars and to better understand the shaping of service delivery for service inclusion.

This paper uses data from a city with a multi-ethnic, multi-faith population to better understand faith-based food aid. The paper aims to understand what constitutes faith-based responses to food insecurity, compare the prevalence and nature of faith-based food aid across different religions and explore how community food aid meets the needs of a multi-ethnic, multi-faith population.

The study involved two phases of primary research. In Phase 1, desk-based research and dialogue with stakeholders in local food security programmes were used to identify faith-based responses to food insecurity. Phase 2 consisted of 18 semi-structured interviews involving faith-based and secular charitable food aid organizations.

The paper illustrates the internal heterogeneity of faith-based food aid. Faith-based food aid is highly prevalent and the vast majority is Christian. Doctrine is a key motivation among Christian organizations for their provision of food. The fact that the clients at faith-based, particularly Christian, food aid did not reflect the local religious demographic is a cause for concern in light of the entry-barriers identified. This concern is heightened by the co-option of faith-based organizations by the state as part of the “Big Society” agenda.

This is the first academic study in the UK to look at the faith-based arrangements of Christian and Muslim food aid providers, to set out what it means to provide faith-based food aid in the UK and to explore how faith-based food aid interacts with people of other religions and no religion.

To examine the rationale for the investment principles adopted by faith‐based funds from a biblical perspective and to evaluate the performance of faith‐based ethical funds.

A multi‐factor Carhart model is applied to examine the risk‐adjusted financial performance and investment strategies of faith‐based ethical funds.

The statistical results indicate that the faith‐based funds as a group do not under‐perform the market on a risk‐adjusted basis.

This suggests that investment managers may incorporate moral/ethical components into their investment decisions without unduly shortchanging their clients for whom they have fiduciary duties.

This is one of the very few papers which study faith‐based funds.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that “being Islamic” is already embedded in the decision frame of the Muslim consumers when choosing their Islamic banks, and hence, the bank selection criteria of these Muslim consumers will be dominated by non-faith-based factors.

This study took the context of retail consumers of Islamic banks of Bangladesh—the fourth largest Muslim populated country in the world, having great potential of developing an Islamic ecosystem. The study employed survey method using structured questionnaire on 311 respondents from 35 branches of six Islamic banks in Dhaka—the capital city of Bangladesh. Exploratory factor analysis, followed by multivariate regression analysis, was conducted to identify the determinants of satisfaction among Muslim retail bank customers.

The study forwards three important findings. First, faith-based bank selection criterion (i.e. Islam) is not a stand-alone factor anymore; rather, the items of this factor are embedded into other non-faith-based factors. Second, among the non-faith-based factors, commitment of the bank, competence and compassion of the bank employees have topped the list of bank selection criteria. Third, competence, commitment and corporate image of the bank had relatively more influence on satisfaction when compared to compassion and convenience.

Since Shari’ah compliance is already embedded in Islamic banking system, Islamic bankers should now focus on strategic targeting of their customers based on non-faith-based operational determinants.

This study presents that non-faith-based selection criteria are more influential in Islamic bank selection decision.

Engaging corporate social responsibility (CSR) is essential to attain corporate sustainability. This paper aims to take the CSR from the viewpoints of a believing system, Christianity in an attempt to bridge a gap in the existing literature.

Through related literature reviews, research questions asked and grounding in the Christians' sacred text, the author seek to explore the Christians' social responsibilities and their relatedness to the CSR.

This paper highlights the interlocking principles – honoring God, one's neighbor, God's creation, great commissions and eternality concept – that shape the Christians' fundamental approaches toward their social responsibilities. These collective faith driven principles would redefine the existing CSR conceptions in a refined form that the author call a faith‐based CSR.

The paper discusses the applications of the faith‐based CSR in the areas of corporate philanthropy, environmental preservation and social reporting. The faith‐based CSR is inherently beneficial to the firms and their stakeholders. It refines the organizational paradigms on the business competition, and uncovers a corporate sustainability paradigm otherwise hidden to managers and scholars.

The Christians have significant presence in both developed and emerging nations. Their worldviews on the social responsibility, consequently, would have influenced the CSR practices of firms. Given the scant attentions paid to explore the intersection between a believing system and the business ethics, this paper can make a unique contribution to the area of CSR literature.

This paper compares how women leaders in four US industries–higher education, faith-based non-profits, healthcare and law–experience 15 aspects of gender bias.

This study used convergent mixed methods to collect data from 1,606 participants. It included quantitative assessment of a validated gender bias scale and qualitative content analysis of open-ended responses.

Results suggest that, while gender bias is prevalent in all four industries, differences exist. Participants in higher education experienced fewer aspects of gender bias than the other three industries related to male culture, exclusion, self-limited aspirations, lack of sponsorship and lack of acknowledgement. The faith-based sample reported the highest level of two-person career structure but the lowest levels of queen bee syndrome, workplace harassment and salary inequality. Healthcare tended towards the middle, reporting higher scores than one industry and lower than another while participants working in law experienced more gender bias than the other three industries pertaining to exclusion and workplace harassment. Healthcare and law were the two industries with the most similar experiences of bias.

This research contributes to human resource management (HRM) literature by advancing understanding of how 15 different gender bias variables manifest differently for women leaders in various industry contexts and by providing HRM leaders with practical steps to create equitable organizational cultures.

Scholars have long argued that churches play a critical role in mobilizing communities marginal to the political process, primarily by pooling resources, disseminating information, and providing opportunities for members to develop community networks, leadership, and civic skills. However, recent research suggests that churches only serve as effective mobilizing institutions when they engage in direct political discussion and recruitment. Even so, churches may face economic, legal, and institutional barriers to entering the political sphere, and explicit political speech and action remain rare. Through an analysis of two years of ethnographic fieldwork following faith-based community organizers attempting to recruit Spanish speakers throughout a Catholic Archdiocese into a campaign for immigrant rights, this paper explores the institutional constraints on church political mobilization, and how these are overcome to mobilize one of the most politically marginal groups in the United States today: Hispanic undocumented immigrants and their allies. I argue that scholars of political engagement must look beyond the structural features of organizations to consider the effects of their institutionalized domains and practices. While churches do face institutional barriers to political mobilization, activists who specialize their recruitment strategy to match the institutional practices of the organizations they target can effectively overcome these barriers to mobilize politically alienated populations.