Sustainable Finance as a Connection Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Responsible Investing
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper focuses on the development of terminology, concepts and instruments to introduce the concept of sustainable development into both financial practise and the financial academic literature. Current developments on financial markets show growing interest for both socially responsible investments (SRI) and sustainable corporate responsibility (CSR). The primary goal of this study is the application of finance as a link between CSR and SRI. The first part of the paper argues that finance urgently needs a 'sustainability approach' to connect the initiatives from the CSR companies with the investor preferences of the SRI capital market. This part is entirely devoted to the 'exchange syntax' of sustainable finance, which refers to the terminology of the distinguished sustainability concepts, their interconnections and the ethical values behind them. Traditional finance is used as a benchmark for describing new developments. The second part of the paper develops further the concept of sustainable corporate finance (SCF), defining it as a multi-attribute approach to finance the company in such a way that all of the company's financial, social and environmental elements are interrelated and integrated. The core elements of SCF include the mission statement of the company, the relevant ethical framework, assumptions on human behaviour and the finance choices on the ownership of the company. The latter aspect will be emphasized as the crucial element of both sustainable (corporate) finance and a sustainable market economy.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Aloy Soppe
Institution: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1934690157