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This paper aims to provide evidence to suggest that private social and environmental reporting (i.e. one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and investees on social and environmental issues) is beginning to merge with private financial reporting and that, as a result, integrated private reporting is emerging.

In this paper, 19 FTSE100 companies and 20 UK institutional investors were interviewed to discover trends in private integrated reporting and to gauge whether private reporting is genuinely becoming integrated. The emergence of integrated private reporting through the lens of institutional logics was interpreted. The emergence of integrated private reporting as a merging of two hitherto separate and possibly rival institutional logics was framed.

It was found that specialist socially responsible investment managers are starting to attend private financial reporting meetings, while mainstream fund managers are starting to attend private meetings on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Further, senior company directors are becoming increasingly conversant with ESG issues.

The findings were interpreted as two possible scenarios: there is a genuine hybridisation occurring in the UK institutional investment such that integrated private reporting is emerging or the financial logic is absorbing and effectively neutralising the responsible investment logic.

These findings provide evidence of emergent integrated private reporting which are useful to both the corporate and institutional investment communities as they plan their engagement meetings.

No study has hitherto examined private social and environmental reporting through interview research from the perspective of emergent integrated private reporting. This is the first paper to discuss integrated reporting in the private reporting context.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine the optimal path of development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries by performing a scenario analysis of the development of social entrepreneurship and analyzing the opinions of interested parties regarding the outcome of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian states. The authors’ recommendations for the practical implementation of the optimal path of social entrepreneurship development are described.

The scenario analysis of statistical data showed that the existing practice of standardization of social companies’ activities hinders their executing their functions on raising the quality of life. With the expansion of freedom of social entrepreneurship, the population’s quality of life grows; on the contrary, the increase of state regulation leads to its reduction. The findings show that social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries is interested in private investments and social companies’ employees. That is why the representatives of these categories of concerned parties support de-regulation. Consumers of social goods and services are interested in obtaining them freely and thus prefer standardization.

This chapter presents a new direction of social entrepreneurship analysis – by determining the correlation between economic freedom and quality of life. This opens an opportunity for thorough social entrepreneurship research based on authentic and objective quantitative (statistical) data. The obtained conclusions and offered recommendations allow using the mechanism of public–private entrepreneurship for turning social entrepreneurship into something more valuable and useful – a tool for increasing the quality of the population’s life.

This article has as objective to present the relation between the current phenomenon of the corporate social responsibility and its relation with the State in the promotion of social policies. We have as example, some cases in Brazil, where the State starts to encourage companies to make social private investment. This is a new way of public administration that praises the co‐responsibility and corporate solidarity with the social development of the country.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with one of the technical difficulties of private and social cost–benefit analysis, i.e. the choice of the proper cost–benefit aggregation rule (or method) to use, when a private capital investment decision has to be taken or a public project appraisal has to be carried out.

Although the considerable amount of existing literature, the problem of the choice of the right mathematical aggregation rule is still an open one. The majority of authors claim that net present value is a superior method and thus it is the one to be always used. Other authors try to show that various aggregation methods, under specific conditions, arrive at the same recommendation. An exceptional case is the field of education economics where the internal rate of return is widely used.

This paper offers a survey of this controversial topic which focuses on some clear cut formal properties of the various aggregation methods and considers the empirical characteristics of the different fields of application. Its main conclusion is that no “correct” aggregation rule, always applicable in all decision frameworks, can exist.

Its main objective is to supply clear guidelines to orient practitioners and help the teaching on this topic. Its main conclusion is that no “correct” aggregation rule, always applicable in all decision frameworks, can exist. On the contrary, even if one restricts her/himself to a particular class of investments, often no clear-cut selection can be made.

This paper aims to develop an interpretative framework of the evolution of social impact investment (SII) in different countries. SII is a strategy of asset allocation, which combines financial profitability with a measurable social and environmental impact.

Through a thematic analysis of 75 documents, i.e. reports, experts’ considerations, reflections on practitioners’ experience, meetings’ minutes, written by the SII Taskforce of the Group of Eight and the relative National Advisory Boards, the authors identify the main themes connected to the topic of SII development and recognize four main elements useful to segment the market, namely, information asymmetry, financial instruments, source of capital and market intermediation.

They map the ongoing practices in the Group of Eight’s members and distinguish two speeds in the evolution of SII: on one hand, there is a group of roadrunners, which pave the way to SII and in which SII activities have being institutionalized; on the other hand, there is a wider group of chasers, where the SII infrastructures lack any systematization.

Although some authors provide preliminary interpretations of the SII evolution, they mainly focus on the national level and do not provide any cross-countries analysis. The findings of the present work contribute to overcome the lack of evidence characterizing the SII field and the absence of comparable and consistent data at the global level by filling the academic literature about SII, through a structured interpretative framework.

This paper draws upon prior research that built a theoretical framework for the emergence of social enterprise ecosystems based upon the biological evolutionary theory. This paper aims to extend this previous research by practically applying the said theory to the development of stakeholder and institutional networks across Europe.

Data from in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups were analysed using Constant Comparison Method. Data were generated from discussions with 258 key stakeholders in ten countries across Europe, exploring the historical, political, social, legal and economic factors that influence the patterns of a social enterprise seen in each country.

The results identify the emergence of four social enterprise ecosystem types (Statist-macro, Statist-micro, Private-macro and Private-micro). These are used to explain the differences found in each of the ten country’s social enterprise ecosystems. The results are discussed in relation to the evolutionary theory in social entrepreneurship and how “genetic” and “epigenetic” factors lead to the divergence of social enterprise ecosystems, and the impact that this has on the stakeholders and institutions that are present within them.

A typology of ecosystems is presented, which can be used by policymakers across Europe to understand how best to support their local social economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of changing biotechnology and intellectual property rights (IPRs), institutions, and policies for Canadian crop development related to oilseed rape or “canola” as a case study. Implications for China as it considers regulatory and institutional change related to private sector incentives to invest in biotechnology are also discussed.

The authors assess the effects of introducing biotechnology and IPRs in the Canadian oilseed sector over time. Data on the rate of return on agricultural research in general are presented and then the focus moves to the impacts for farmers in Canada. New data are gathered to estimate recent gains in the benefit of biotechnology advancements for farmers. Furthermore, the evolution of agricultural research in China is briefly presented, and a discussion follows that considers Canadian evidence and the possible applicability of the impacts to China.

The results support earlier studies identifying gains from agricultural research and show that private sector investments in Canada are now much higher than public sector investments and thus institutional innovations have been a powerful trigger to improve productivity. The gains from biotechnology for farmers are now over CND 1 billion per year in Canada.

The research gains measured are for Canada so should be applied to China’s situation only as a potential for gains.

While more work is needed to identify reasonable institutional incentives to generate private investment in China’s biotechnology industry, the potential impact in the Canadian canola sector highlights the importance of continuing the investment in biotechnology, and the need for appropriate policies and regulations to spur private investment.

Biotechnology greatly improved the welfare of farmers in Canada. Much of the gain the authors find was in improved yields and lower herbicide costs that improved farmer profits. Privatization of breeding was a key step in this transformation.

The paper contributes an updated review of Canadian intellectual property institutions related to biotechnology, and an updated measure of gains at the farm level. It also begins the analysis of the applicability of these institutional changes for China.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the intersection of research on impact investing and its closely related financial vehicles.

The paper explores 196 articles collected from Scopus and Web of Science using bibliometric and content analysis methodologies.

Despite a growing academic interest in impact investing, scholars generally investigate impact investing as a social phenomenon, using the specific financial mechanism of social impact bonds. This perspective potentially deflates the complex nature of impact investing, which actually combines both social and financial targets and uses a plurality of financial vehicles to reach its goals.

The emerging themes identified will provide both academics and practitioners additional tools to further the debate on impact investing and the understanding of its potential and limits according to the different financial forms it takes. This review should pave the way for a discussion about the boundaries of the social impact sector itself.

Despite the strong international commitment toward impact investing, tensions still exist. A comprehensive overview on the relevant aspects not yet thoroughly investigated will foster the growth of impact investments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first holistic overview of impact investing, that jointly examines both literature on impact investing and literature on the correlated financial products used in the industry. The result is a comprehensive report of what is known about impact investing in its different financial forms, opening up new pathways for future studies.

Over the last several decades, the question of the import of firms’ social and environmental responsibilities has taken center stage. While once companies’ obligations to stakeholders and to sustainability were framed as normative issues, these criteria are taking on instrumental worth. Most recently, advocates of Responsible Investment have suggested that firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance possesses critical implications for companies’ creation and capture of long-term economic value. Employing textual analysis, this chapter analyzes the accounting, rating, and reporting standards that have been developed by which companies are expected to measure, communicate, and be evaluated for their ESG performance. Drawing from literature on organizational imprinting, this chapter finds significant differences across these standards, in terms of the determination of materiality and firms’ desired stakeholder relations. The divergence present in the meaning and measure of Responsible Investment across these standards possesses important strategic implications for managers in this field who must consider the implications of each guideline for internal and external purposes.