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In recent years, new forms of investment have been created to direct funds towards companies performing well according to predefined environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indicators. This volume addresses moral, political, and legal questions about the legitimacy of ESG as a management and investment strategy. Some chapters argue that ESG strategies should focus on creating real-life impacts on morally significant problems, such as climate change, human rights violations, and corporate corruption. Other chapters instead examine the possibility that the long-term feasibility of ESG limits its moral ambitions, requiring ESG to be regarded as only a set of devices for minimizing risk in a way that protects financial gain. The book contributes a much-needed understanding of ethical interpretations of the ESG movement, which are likely to drive future social, political and legal developments.
List of contents
Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction: ESG, ethics, law, and beyond Valentina Gentile, Eric W. Orts, Andreas Rasche and Alan Strudler; 1. ESG as dead and alive: how confusion around ESG's meaning hinders and benefits ESG's future Lisa M. Fairfax; 2. Ethics by proxy? An agency-theoretic analysis of ESG investment Joseph Heath and Sareh Pouryousefi; 3. What is the purpose of ESG? Who should decide? Valentina Gentile, Eric W. Orts and Alan Strudler; 4. The square peg: why the environment won't fit management models Thomas Donaldson; 5. Success, law, and ESG Colin Mayer; 6. Reforming ESG ratings: contributions from deliberative theory Andreas Georg Scherer, Dana Entenza and David Sieber; 7. Responsibilization of business and the informational ethics of ESG Steen Vallentin; 8. The ethics of ESG integration: ethical dilemmas of quantification Andreas Rasche; 9. The ethical quandary of monetary valuation in ESG impact measurement Laura Marie Edinger-Schons and Judith Stroehle; Index.
About the author
Valentina Gentile is an Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at LUISS University of Rome.Eric W. Orts is the Guardsmark Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.Andreas Rasche is Professor of Business in Society at Copenhagen Business School and Associate Dean for its full-time MBA Program.Alan Strudler is a Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.
