Search results

The present study is aimed at understanding the survival strategies of Subsistence-type Rural Independent retailers, henceforth called SRIs, in the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) markets of developing economies through a qualitative study. SRIs constitute a pivotal channel of distribution of goods to BoP consumers living in the rural areas of developing economies. A process of long interviews was chosen for data gathering to allow SRIs to go into details to allow them to expound upon their beliefs, life-situations, and societal norms. Narratives were collected verbatim from SRIs. The concept of socio-economic embeddedness is used as the central concept to interpret and connect the elements, discerned from the narratives, into a conceptual framework. The aforesaid theory combines the neo-classical economic concept of utility maximization with behavioral economics and economic sociology. The analysis of the narratives is interpretive against the identified elements of the concept of economic embeddedness. The survival strategies of SRIs seem to stem from sociological, psychological, and utility-maximizing behaviors. The elements of SRIs’ responses to its environment provide valuable insights into their purchase motivations.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) funds have grown dramatically as an investment alternative in most of the developed world. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study uses a structured experimental approach to determine if the decision-making process of investors to invest in SRIs is consistent with the process used for conventional investments. The theoretical framework draws on two widely studied concepts in the decision making and investment literature, namely, inertia and discounting.

The authors find that inertia plays a significant role in the selection of SRI funds and that investors systemically discount the value of SRIs.

The results suggest that SRIs need to be designed to cater to the risk/return profiles of investors and that these investors need to be better informed about the performance of SRIs vs conventional investments to reduce their systematic discounting.

Unique experimental approach applied to investment alternatives in a manner that captures individual level variation.

With a few exceptions copies of patents are easy and relatively cheap to acquire. The patents holdings of major depositories are listed and some of the potential pitfalls affecting requests for copies are considered. The value of tapping the bibliographical skills of the supplying libraries is emphasized.

This paper applies an original construct of “subjective risk intelligence (SRI)” to the small business context. By leveraging on its multidimensionality, it aims to shed light on the existing ambiguities in the analysis of the relationship between the entrepreneurial attitude towards risk evaluation and firms’ financial stability.

The empirical investigation refers to the Italian context, where an ad hoc survey has been administered to a sample of small businesses. Based on both a linear and a semiparametric regression, results show a significant relationship between SRI and firm’s financial structure, and that such relationship is basically nonlinear.

Evidence shows that entrepreneurs with a high level of risk intelligence run highly leveraged firms. Moreover, in the light of the non-linearity of such relationship, higher levels of risk intelligence are associated with a greater capacity of the entrepreneur to govern the financial balance of the enterprise only up to a certain threshold. Over this threshold, risk intelligence generates overconfidence leading the entrepreneur to a reckless behaviour in taking financial risks.

From a theoretical point of view, the paper contributes to the literature by shedding lights on the complexity of the relationship between risk intelligence and small businesses. From a policy point of view, findings suggest that, to train new entrepreneurs, the educational system aims should focus on the development of two specific “soft skills”: the ability to manage emotions and the ability to glimpse opportunities even in uncertain situations.

Despite the increasing demand for socially responsible investments (SRIs) and the importance of information intermediaries in providing corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance information through SRI screens, relatively little is known about the relationship between nonprofessional investors’ views regarding SRI, their use of SRI screens and their actual SRI behavior. This study aims to distinguish between investor views about the importance of corporate environmental responsibility (environmental performance importance views) and whether they view environmentally responsible firms as yielding higher returns (environmental performance return views). It examines the association between these views, SRI screen use and reported SRI holdings.

Nonprofessional investor participants completed an online survey about their SRI investment views, screen use and investment behavior. The survey yielded 201 usable responses.

The strength of participants’ environmental performance importance and environmental performance return views is positively associated with their use of SRI screens and the proportion of their portfolios held in SRIs. SRI screen use only partially mediates the association between investors’ environmental performance importance and return views and their SRI holdings.

The study does not precisely address what types of SRI screens nonprofessional investors may be using. It does not control for investors’ specific experience with SRIs, nor does it examine how or why investors come to believe that environmental responsibility may improve a company’s return potential.

The fact that SRI screen use only partially mediates the association between investors’ views and their SRI holdings suggests that either reliable, unfiltered CSR information is important for nonprofessional investors or some investors are choosing SRIs without obtaining adequate relevant information.

The study’s findings confirm earlier research findings which show an association between investors’ pro-environmental views and their decision to invest in SRIs (Williams, 2007; Nilsson, 2008) and suggest that nonprofessional investors are becoming aware of the positive relation between environmental performance and firm value (Dhaliwal et al., 2011; Clarkson et al., 2013; Hawn et al., 2014; Matsumura et al., 2014).

This study simultaneously examines the influence of environmental performance importance (an “alternative” investment perspective) and environmental performance return (a “traditional” investment perspective) on investors’ SRI behavior.

The overall goal of this chapter is to critique the purported business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, which persists as a major contentious force in convincing companies to become more sustainable. Extant literature on sustainability, CSR and Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs) generally tends to focus on company perspectives decision-making and approaches. This chapter considers an alternative and under-developed perspective and examines CSR from a consumer/public perspective situated in a German context.

This chapter builds a comprehensive literature review and employs a research philosophical point of view underpinned by a social constructionist stance. It examines indicators and attitudes towards sustainability and sustainable consumption together with socially responsible investments and considers whether the buying patterns of German consumers may serve as a rationalisation for a potential business case for CSR and sustainability.

While the awareness of consumers of CSR in Germany towards sustainability tends to be generally relatively prima facie high, it is nevertheless noticeable that German consumers are predominately reluctant to pay a price premium for product possessing a superior sustainability performance. From the alternative lens of SRIs, rather than being a replete and widespread phenomenon, they are still largely a niche market. For these reasons, the potential for the existence of a business case for sustainability, CSR and SRIs tends in reality to be low, in spite of some populist or survey reports and perceptions.

The chapter links a consumer perspective with the business case for CSR. Moreover, it focuses on the German context which tends to be underrepresented in international research.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a mapping of the studies field about socially responsible investments (SRI), showing the different existing lines of research about nowadays theme. Additionally, the study shows considerations and prospects possible future agenda of research related to the SRI thematic.

It was performed a systematic literature review from a database of 691 articles selected in the ISI Web of Science. The computer software – HistCite is used to define the lines of research.

Based on the study and analysis of the identified lines of research, future study possibilities in this area were shown. So, it was identified five lines of research, which were named by the construction of SRI portfolio, investors’ behavior, SRI versus corporate social responsibility, institutional investors and comparison between conventional investors and SRI. These lines were evidenced in a citation map.

This paper complements the existing literature reviews, as it uses a broader time horizon (1981 to 2018) and has a different approach, using the HistCite^TM software, which enabled the identification of the different lines of research related to SRI. Additionally, it has been raised ten possible ways to future studies related to the SRI thematic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether socially responsible investment (SRI) is less sensitive to market downturns than conventional investments; the legal implications for fund managers and trustees; and possible legislative reforms to allow conventional funds more scope to invest in SRI.

The paper uses the market model to estimate betas over the past 15 years for SRI funds and conventional investment funds during economic downturns, as distinct from during more “normal” (non‐recessionary) economic times.

The beta risk of SRI, both in Australia and internationally, increases more than that of conventional investment during economic downturns. Traditional fund managers and trustees in Australia are therefore likely to breach their fiduciary duties if they go long – or remain long – in SRI funds during economic downturns, unless relevant legislation is reformed.

The methodology assumes that alpha and beta in the market model are constant. Second, it categorises the state of the market into “normal” economic conditions and downturns using dummy variables. More sophisticated techniques could be used in future research.

The current law would prevent conventional funds from investing in SRI. If SRI is viewed as socially desirable, useful legislative reforms could include explicitly overriding the common law to allow conventional funds to invest in SRI; introducing a 150 percent tax deduction or investment allowance for SRI; and allowing SRI sub‐funds to obtain deductible gift recipient status from the Australian Tax Office and other taxation authorities.

The accurate assessment of risk in SRIs is an area which, despite its serious legal implications, is yet to be subjected to rigorous empirical investigation.

This work draws on important issues that are related to all socio‐economic agents. We refer to Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs), arguing on the clear benefits they provide to companies and financial institutions. The main empirical objective of this work is to show a theoretical framework for the existence and supply of non‐financial information on financial products by financial institutions in the Portuguese Investment Market (comprising of Banks and Fund and Investment Companies – FIMCs).

Overall, 55 Banks and 41 FIMCs, were analysed, totalling 96 observations for analysis. The paper studies the supply of non‐financial information (i.e. social and environmental information) regarding the financial products in the Portuguese investment market (comprising of Banks and Fund and Investment Management Companies). Through surveys’ analysis, which were sent to 96 of these financial institutions, we conclude that the supply of these informations’ sets is practically inexistent.

Overall, the conclusions point to the fact that financial institutions surveyed are very much behind in this new framework and related tools, when considering similar financial institutions outside Portugal. There are some institutions that do provide, but when compared to other European and non‐European countries, the discrepancy is huge. It is concluded that much needs to be done in this field, starting with a clear definition of the benefits and costs of providing non‐financial information.

At the academic level, the authors have not found any good study neither on CSR nor on SRIs done by Portuguese researchers nor on its Market. A priori the authors felt that the Portuguese Banks and The Fund and Investment Management Companies were not committed to Sustainability issues, because they believe that for these business agents, Sustainable Development still means, Environmentalism. Through this study the authors seek to provide an image of how the Investment Market is to regards to Sustainable issues, in Portugal, and thus help financial institutions and economic agents (e.g. bank managers, portfolio managers, among others) to know more about these issues that are important to any company.

Despite the benefits of international diversification, the home equity bias phenomenon is well documented in the portfolio choice literature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the same investment behavior applies to domestic socially responsible investments (SRIs) where ethical screenings should be the selection criteria.

The authors apply the model by Coval and Moskowitz (1999), Grinblatt and Keloharju (2001) and Agarwal and Hauswald (2010) to uncover the effect of distance relative to screenings on SRI domestic portfolio choice. For the first time, the authors test the robustness of distance effect by using time bias, which is the travel time between the fund manager and the company’s headquarter.

The authors find that SRIs exhibit a strong preference for locally headquartered firms. After controlling for screening activity and other fund characteristics, the authors still find a strong distance bias in SRI fund portfolio decision-making. The authors find that this bias is mostly observed in SRI fund with social screening and that fund holding characteristics determine the propensity of fund managers to invest locally. The results suggest that the local bias puzzle exists in SRI.

This study provides avenue for future research to examine whether the same local bias is found in SRI investment in other countries where they have different characteristics and behavior. Also, the evidence that local bias exists in SRI investment may need further analysis as to whether this is conflicting with the objectives of SRI, which focus more on ethical beliefs.

The results suggest that many local firms in the same city currently held by an SRI fund will not be held by this fund if it is in another city. The implications of the findings are that geographic proximity, along with ethical screenings, is an important dimension to how SRI fund invests.

This study is the first that examines local bias in SRI funds by using portfolio holding data.