How to invest ethically:- It is very important to research completely about the company before investing .Company’s history & finance must be reviewed to decide if the investment decision is financially sound. Besides focusing on financial return, which is just one of the various aspects of ethical investing, one must see how much company is committed to do ethical practices. Thus companies ethics and investment performances- both must be examined clearly. Talking about company’s ethics—Every corporate website highlights a section on ‘sustainability’ these days. However it is difficult to decide as to how much to believe of what has been read. Is the company truly justifying “sustainability” or is it just a strategy towards building public …show more content…
Such information is often seen in the websites of companies, but sometimes they give such information to promote its positive image. So investors must verify all information’s from reliable sources like news articles, journals etc. and not just rely on the website. To add more to it, if one is an angel investor or a direct investor in small cap businesses, information about the owner’s plans of the business for the upcoming years and his credibility must be known. One must also explore the possibility of the right to participate in planning the future affairs of the company. If the task of making investments is entrusted to a service provider one must check the background and the reliability of service being provided to have some idea about the investment performance. Gaining exposure towards ethical investing:- There are a number of ways to invest while maintaining ones moral & ethical values. One may select from number of SRI mutual funds available in Canada & U.S. One may consider investing in SRI Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs ) such as i-shares Canadian Jantzi social index fund (TSX:XEN) in Canada and KLD 400 social Index funds(NYSE:DSI) in the U.S.. Investors may also invest seeking the guidance of the research firms that compile ESG ranking of the companies. Most ethical fund managers include a combination of the two approaches (positive and negative
When talking about sustainability numerous people associate it with just protecting the environment. Sustainability is far more than going green, but it is a principle that many companies have adopted and have worked persistently to improve over the last several years. Sustainability is defined as the ability to continue a behavior indeterminately, but it also includes improving human life overall. Sustainable development is broken down into three pillars: economic, social, and environmental (Harich & Bangerter, 2014). Economics is the study of how people use resources, which correlates to the goal of sustainable development by using resources to their full potential (Laszlo, C., & Zhexembayeva, N., 2011, p. 60). Economic sustainable development allows companies to give their customers what they want without overusing mutual resources. Social development combines the social world with the physical realm to provide a good quality of life (Benoit, 2010, p. 7). Social sustainability focuses on the well-being of people and their communities. Environmental development, the most recognizable, includes protecting the environment by reducing pollution, recycling, switching of electronic devices when not in use, etc. All three of these pillars make up what is known as sustainable development. In this paper, I researched a company and their involvement in sustainability and how it applies to the
Although there is no formal definition for the term, individuals have tried to define sustainability according to their function or area of study. The term “sustainability,” once an obscure ecological concept, has now been adopted by many in the business world to connote the principles of social and environmental responsibility (Joseph Fiksel, Jonathan Low and Jim Thomas). Further, sustainability can be seen through the eyes of business as a way to create value. More likely than not, the term sustainability can be linked to the ability of decreasing costs, wastes and inefficiencies. According to the vice president of General Electric,
A lot of key factors would need to be considered when determining if a company is being ran ethically
Many firms are learning that being environmentally friendly and sustainable has numerous benefits. (O.C Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2015). This could enable them to increase goodwill from various stakeholders and also save money in the long term. This will mean that they are being more efficient and less wasteful of resources, which will enable them to be more competitive by satisfying stakeholders. The CEO of
The main question of the study is how financially well the company is at the moment and what investment expectation it generates on the market nowdays.
Although not all companies are successful at truly embodying what it means to be green, even companies that have been synonymous for contributing pollutants and greenhouse gasses spend millions trying to convince stakeholders that they do. It’s often these last two dimensions of CSR—social and environmental, that either embroil a corporation in controversy or allow it to serve as an exemplar in good ethical business practices.
As we have seen an increase in awareness around sustainability and climate change, with the help of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary in 2006, we see organizations moving towards mitigating the effects of climate change in various ways (Al Gore, n.d). As this corporate social responsibility has become more prevalent, organizations are now pushing their green agenda by publishing sustainability reports, doing mass marketing and implementing sustainable business practices to portray the image that they too are working towards protecting the earth’s natural environment all the while focusing on their underlying goal of selling their products and
Schaltegger, S., & Burritt, R. (2015). Business cases and corporate engagement with sustainability: Differentiating ethical motivations. Journal of Business 147(2), 241-259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2938-0
Sustainability has achieved a more ecological tone in the past few decades in terms of a business model, but it originally derives from the concept that a business is successful due to the interconnected areas of economics, culture and ecology. Sustainability is now becoming a somewhat fad and thus it is understandable that it could be misconstrued by some as a form of “greenwashing”. Greenwashing is the idea that a company markets their “green” or environmentally friendly changes in policy and values, despite no actual concrete changes in these areas, for example some argue that Fiji Water greenwasher in terms of their marketing as an environmentally friendly water company despite their little effort to actually go carbon-neutral. Many companies are seeing the
The idea of sustainability has become an increasingly common term in the rhetoric surrounding business ethics, as corporates are gaining broader acknowledgement of this pro-active method which guarantees business long-term viability and integrity by focusing on the triple bottom line. In business, the three aspects of sustainability include social, economic and environment.
Industries around the world, some more than other, have revenue and assets higher than the GDP of a number of nations. This makes them more powerful than those nations. These companies are run by Individuals who essentially make decisions on how the profit is made and how operations and activities are carried out. Their actions and decisions could potentially have an impact on a number of things, generally; the environment, national economies and even the lives of people somewhere on the globe. Making ethical decisions entails the decision maker(s) moral judgement about what is right and wrong and is carried out based on what they think is the right course of action. This may involve whiling away what could potentially increase a business’s yield financially but will also cause harm or pain for other stakeholder’s involved. This is why among many other reasons, ethics is very important for both the businesses and the society.
(Panza & Potthast, n.d.) Ethics is very important to a company’s success. Ethical behavior can bring benefits to a business. They can attract customers, which can lead to a boost in sales and profits. It can attract the right employees and increase productivity. It can also attract investors and keep the company’s share price high. Unethical behavior on the other hand can damage a company’s reputation and make it less appealing to stakeholders. It could also result in lower profits.
The information can be gathered in various ways: mass media, infiltration in company’s personnel, conversations
ethical approach can be taken in the best interests of the company. Again, to maintain a strong
Sustainability when we try to understand in the context of corporate is recognizing that the corporation’s long