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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of key issues in the governance of defined contribution pension schemes, with a focus on investment matters, and to recommend best practices.

The paper draws on the results of an online survey of the opinions of pensions professionals and on interviews with pensions professionals.

The paper finds that many employers and pension scheme trustees are reluctant to take an active role in pension scheme design and to provide support and guidance to members for fear of legal liability. Scope exists for regulators and legislators to create “safe harbour” provisions that will encourage employers and trustees to become more active in supporting members.

The paper makes a number of suggestions for best practice in the design and governance of defined contribution pension schemes, for example, in terms of the fund choice that should be offered.

The paper provides the first comprehensive review of investment issues for UK defined contribution pension plans.

Technology has changed the way companies do business. As such, it has changed the way consultants dispense their expertise. Without a thorough re‐evaluation of the technology vs consultant ratio, companies are likely to squander funds and waste valuable resources and opportunities. Following the Second World War, companies started offering a plethora of company‐sponsored benefit plans. As these plans grew in complexity, consultants where brought for their experience and expertise. With stretched resources and companies expected to do more with less employees, HR outsourcing has become a nationwide trend. With this came many opportunities for consultants. With all these opportunities come situations where technology could be leveraged to complete projects better or in a more cost‐effective manner than consultants. With the advent of the internet, companies can leverage existing tools and services to do what a consultant does for a fraction of the cost. The value of a good consultant may be how he or she interacts with and augments face‐and‐brain time with technology. This article proposes that understanding and evaluating the return on investment of outsourcing consulting services in light of the new role of technology is vital for companies and their budget.

To understand the motivations for adopting RI practices for institutional investors and asset managers; to understand the different RI strategies available to institutional investors; to understand the impediments to adoption of RI at an organisational level; to debate how financial institutions can drive the growth and adoption of RI among the investment community; and to illustrate the complexities of organisational change and the strategies that institutional entrepreneurs can use to overcome resistance to change from key stakeholders.

The case is set in October 2017 against the backdrop of the pending unbundling of Old Mutual plc into four new independent businesses, and the subsequent relisting of Old Mutual Ltd on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa. The head of responsible investment at Old Mutual Investment Group and the main protagonist of the case, Jon Duncan, is considering what the subsequent relisting will mean for the responsible investing programmes that he has set up over the past six years. The case goes on to describe how responsible investment principles were supported through the implementation of ESG integration and active ownership strategies. It also examines recent developments in ESG product innovations and demonstrates another technique available to responsible investment practitioners in the form of best-in-class ESG screening. The case ends with Duncan contemplating the strategic priorities of the RI team moving forward, and how the managed separation might impact on the RI agenda. It provides prompts for students to discuss and formulate a strategy for advancing the aims of responsible investing.

The case is aimed at postgraduate-level students enrolled in a management-related degree programme such as an MBA, and covers both sustainable and responsible finance and institutional entrepreneurship theory.

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CSS 1: Accounting and Finance

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of professionalism into the current discussion of the proper scope of regulation of investment advisers.

The authors reviewed the scholarly literature on what constitutes a profession, the debates over the two bills introduced in Congress in 2012 concerning investment adviser regulation, and some of the studies that led up to those bills.

The authors concluded that professionalism could apply to some investment advisers, particularly financial planners, and that the development of such a profession should be encouraged. However, they found that such a profession would threaten the economic interests of broker‐dealers and their registered representatives, whose routine use of such titles as “financial advisor” or “investment consultant” has led to consumer confusion over the different roles of brokers and advisers. Therefore broker‐dealer interests favor more intense regulation of investment advisers by an SRO such as FINRA, presuming that would impair the development of a true profession of investment advisers.

This paper aims to ensure that the development of a true profession of investment advisers and/or financial planners is openly and fully debated if and when consideration of investment adviser regulation is reintroduced.

The role that professionalism can and should play in investment adviser regulation has not been previously discussed, even though broker‐dealer registered representatives routinely use confusingly professional‐sounding titles to compete against independent investment advisers.

This study provides an extensive risk assessment framework for nonlisted real estate funds' (NREFs) portfolio management in India across their life cycle; that is, the investment stage, the monitoring stage and the exit stage in an emerging market context. The study of risk across these three stages is a new addition to the literature and assumes importance in the context of real estate portfolio management for NREFs in the emerging markets (e.g. India), which are predominantly an opportunistic investment play.

The risk assessment framework is built on the multiactor/multicriteria risk priorities, using analytical hierarchy process (AHP), obtained from 35 experts in four real estate fund management professional groups; namely, investors/fund managers, valuers, consultants and international developers.

The results demonstrate that the real estate portfolio management risk priorities change across the three life cycle stages of the fund. At the investment stage, specific risks are most critical; at the monitoring stage, it is important to concentrate on all three risks – specific, systematic and management risks; and at the exit stage, systematic risk plays a crucial role. Real estate portfolio management risk evaluation at the subfactor level shows that investee/partner and location selection needs to be critically evaluated at the time of the investment; project execution and quality of development must be monitored during the construction/monitoring period; and repatriation of the funds, currency volatility and exit risk (resale) are critical at the exit stage of the fund.

The understanding of the real estate portfolio management risk transformation across the life cycle stages is crucial for NREF managers for risk minimization, transfer and mitigation strategy formulation in their real estate portfolios. Unlike previous research that evaluates investment risk, this study breaks the NREF's risks into the investment, monitoring and exit stages. The key risk factors for each stage depend on the NREF's real estate activities for that stage. These activities, in turn, give rise to a typical risk profile for that stage. The findings are crucial for the various stakeholders of real estate fund management and policymakers in an emerging market context; particularly India, one of the fastest growing major economies in the world.

This risk assessment framework for simultaneously assessing risk across the three life cycle stages of NREFs is a new addition to the literature.

Purpose – This chapter traces the creation of a market for strategy by management consulting firms during the second half of the twentieth century in order to demonstrate their impact in shaping debates in the subject and demand for their services by corporate executives.

Design/methodology/approach – Using historical analysis, the chapter draws on institutional theory, including institutional isomorphism. It uses both primary and secondary data from the leading consulting firms to describe how consultants shifted from offering advice on organizational structure to corporate strategy and eventually to corporate legitimacy as a result of the changing economic and regulatory environment of the time.

Findings/originality/value – This study provides a historical context for the emergence of corporate and competitive strategy as an institutional practice in both the United States and around the world, and provides insights into how important this history can be in understanding the debates among consultants and academics during strategy's emergence as an academic subject and practical application.

The purpose of this paper is two fold: educate investors about hedge fund managers' activities prior to the fraud recognition by the authorities and to help investors and other stakeholders in the hedge fund industry identify red flags before fraud is actually committed.

The paper investigates fraud committed by the Bayou Funds, Beacon Hill Asset Management, Lancer Management Group (LMG), Lipper & Company and Maricopa investment fund. The fraud activities took place during 2000 and 2005.

The five cases alone cost the hedge fund investors more than $1.5 billion. Investors may have had a good opportunity for avoiding the irrecoverable costs of the fraud had they carefully vetted the backgrounds of the hedge fund managers and/or continuously monitored the funds activities, especially during turbulent market environments.

This is the first research paper to identify and extensively investigate fraud committed by hedge funds. In spite of the size of the hedge fund industry and relatively substantial level and inevitably recurring fraud, academic journals are to yet address this issue. The paper is of great value to hedge funds and their individual and institutional investors, asset managers, financial advisers and regulators.

Choosing a programming method necessitates that the company examines its own policies and composition. The reports of other firms' programming efforts are helpful only where the same or similar problems exist and where the two companies are enough alike to make valid generalizations. Before inquiring into the specific differences of the programming methods, many firms have found it helpful to review their positions on three matters; (1) the topics they intend to program, (2) the priority among these topics, and (3) the available financial support for programming. Some firms approach deciding what topics to program by asking, ‘What are the activities within this company in which programming would produce the greatest result?’ For example, many retail stores have chosen their basic sales systems as the lead‐off topics because they feel that the crucial sell or no sell decisions are most affected by the sales person's approach and knowledge of selling. On the other hand, in a chemical company where safety is a key problem and one mistake could kill many people, programming safety techniques will have top priority. Closely related to this profit or necessity approach to programming is the question of how much the company has to invest and over what time period. Purchasing 500 programs which cost $20 each means a direct outlay of $10 000 plus the indirect costs of training wages and support personnel once the programs are put into use.

Investment decisions hold immense significance for investors and eventually affect their portfolio performance. Investors are advised to weigh the costs and benefits associated with every decision in order to make rational investment decisions. However, behavioral finance research reveals that investors' choices often stem from a blend of economic, psychological and sociological factors, leading to irrationality. Moreover, environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors, aligned with behavioral finance hypotheses, also sway opinions and stock prices. Hence, this study aims to identify how individual equity investors prioritize key determinants of investment decisions in the Indian stock market.

The current research gathered data from 391 individual equity investors through a structured questionnaire. Thereafter, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP) was used to meet the purpose of the research.

Information availability, representative heuristics belonging to psychological factors and macroeconomic indicators falling under economic factors were discovered to be the three most prioritized criteria, whereas environmental issues within the realm of ESG factors, recommendations of brokers or investment consultants of sociological factors, and social issues belonging to ESG factors were found to be the least prioritized criteria, respectively.

Only active and experienced individual equity investors were surveyed in this study. Furthermore, with a sample size of 391 participants, the study was confined to individual equity investors in one nation, India.

This research has implications for individual investors, institutional investors, market regulators, corporations, financial advisors, portfolio managers, policymakers and society as a whole.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no real attempt has been made to comprehend how active and experienced individual investors prioritize critical determinants of investment decisions by taking economic, psychological, sociological and ESG factors collectively under consideration.

The inaugural Global Investment Management Survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC identified 10 key issues faced by industry leaders. 1) Customers come first, but demands can sap profits. 2) A good reputation is more valuable than money. 3) Rebuilding customer trust is difficult in a culture of suspicion. 4) Retaining talent will be more difficult than ever as the investment markets rebound. 5) Scale is necessary for global players, but difficult to achieve outside the United States because of friction in the markets. 6) Traditional employee benefit consultants need to understand investor risk appetites and guard against distancing investment managers from end users. 7.) Growth needs to be built on margin ‐ concentrating on products where substantial scale can be added without substantial cost. 8) Consolidation across investment products, service providers, and manufacturers is expected but is hampered by cross‐border regulatory and tax barriers. 9) Distributors have increased influence and negotiating power over investment managers. 10) Head offices must balance protecting their brands with delegating to those with local knowledge.