Abstract
Religious organisations are major investors with sometimes substantial investment volumes. An important question for them is how to make investments in, and to earn returns from, companies and activities that are consistent with their religious beliefs or that even support these beliefs. Religious organisations have pioneered responsible investment. Yet little is known about their investment attitudes. This article addresses this gap by studying faith consistent investing. Based on a survey complemented by interviews, we investigate religious organisations’ attitudes towards responsible investment including opinions, practices and the impediments for implementing faith consistent investing. Although our results cannot be generalised because of the non-random character of our sample, six main characteristics of faith consistent investing are drawn: investing is not perceived as being in contradiction with religious values, religious values are important drivers, there is a strong community around faith consistent investing, religious investors are pioneering impact investing, implementing faith consistent investing is not without difficulties, and practices vary across regions. The survey also reveals that faith consistent investing has many commonalities with secular responsible investors.
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Notes
According to His Excellence Mr Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary General, speech at the Celebration of Faiths and the Environment in Windsor in November 2009.
For more information see the Church of England’s website, www.cofe.anglican.org/info/ethical, accessed on February 26, 2011.
For more information see OMI Justice and Peace/Integrity of Creation Office’s website, www.omiusajpic.org, accessed on February 26, 2011.
For more information see Union for Reform Judaism’s website, www.urj.org, accessed on February 26, 2011.
For more information see The Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church’s website, www.cfbmethodistchurch.org.uk, Accessed on February 19, 2011.
For more information see the The General Board of Pension and Health Benefits’ website, www.gbophb.org, Accessed on February 19, 2011.
For more information see www.jesuit.org, Accessed on February 19, 2011.
For those interested in an extensive annotated bibliography of academic studies on this topic, see the website maintained by the Center for Responsible Business, sristudies.org (www.sristudies.org).
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the International Interfaith Investment Group (3iG) for making this research possible. They have helped us both in terms of financial resources, networks and content. We would also like to thank the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, the Ecumenical Council on Corporate Responsibility, Oikocredit and SHARE for providing access to their networks.
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Louche, C., Arenas, D. & van Cranenburgh, K.C. From Preaching to Investing: Attitudes of Religious Organisations Towards Responsible Investment. J Bus Ethics 110, 301–320 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1155-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1155-8