ABIS Special Issue: Driving impact through responsible investing and finance

We are pleased to announce the publication of an ABIS Special Issue focusing on "Driving impact through responsible investing and finance". 

It all started when at the 20^th Annual Colloquium highlighting the theme “Driving impact through responsible investing” on 23^rd November 2021. The conference welcomed responsible investing professionals, business practitioners, as well as scholars and educators in business, management and sustainable finance and engaged them in high level and practice-based dialogues on how to enhance positive business impact on society through responsible investing. The conference offered various views on responsible investing, as well as corporate perspectives, reflection on the role of business schools and the effect of integrating responsible investing in management education and also latest research findings from academics and practitioners in two tracks:

• ESG, Corporate Governance and Value Creation;
• Responsible Investing approaches and performance.

Following Colloquium, a collaboration was formed with the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal (SAMPJ) to create a Special Issue (SI) with the focus on “Driving impact through responsible investing” opened to a variety of researchers and practitioners to submit their papers related to the topic.

The Special Issue is designed to help the ABIS business-academic network and beyond to gain and access relevant insights on:

• how to enhance positive business impact on society through responsible investing
• the alignment among business and investors on investing in sustainable activities

The papers included in the SI contribute to the existing body of knowledge by providing justifications and incentives to apply more responsible business and financial models as well as recommended course of actions and policy implications. While a direct causal relationship between increased investment in ESG practices and improved financial performance is not always apparent, especially in the shorter run (in line with previous
rather ambiguous evidence on ESG investing, e.g. Matos, 2020), the majority of the papers included in the SI make the case for an expanded role of the financial sector in supporting the sustainability transition (Sood et al., 2023). Financial markets, by engaging in responsible investments and ESG approaches, can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, and industries such as asset management are considered critical in this process (Folque et al., 2023). As shareholders, they can have an active role in supporting business to transition to more sustainable practices and companies are thus likely to experience more pressure to change (Viviers and Steenkamp, 2023). As exposed in one of the papers, there is already a shift in the financial community towards allocating capital to impact on the real economy (Diener, 2023). As the SI started to come together between the turbulent times of the Covid-19 pandemic, a sample of papers also cover the impact of Covid-19 and other socio-economic developments (Sood et al., 2023). Overall, the authors share the perspective that the financial sector has a key role in achieving the UN SDGs and calls for concerted effort in developing ESG strategies, responsible investing approaches and regulatory frameworks to invest for the benefit of people, communities and society as a whole. 

For these efforts in publishing and finalising our Special Issue, we would like to thank our dedicated Guest Editors:

• Joan Fontrodona, Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Department, IESE Business School
• Luk Van Wassenhove, Emeritus Professor of Technology and Operations Management, INSEAD
• Ivo Matser, CEO, ABIS - The Academy of Business in Society

Thank you to our published authors for trusting the process:

• Ines Kammoun, Yusuf Babatunde Adeneye, Ab Wahab, Siti Nur Aqilah Ab Wahab
• Maria Folgué, Elena Escrig-Olmedo, María Corzo Santamaría
• Kirti Sood, Kumar Arijit, Prachi Patak, H.C. Purohit
• Efe C. Caglar Cagli, Pinar Evrim Mandaci, Dilvin Taskin
• Joel Diener
• Rui Vicente Martins, Teresa Eugénio, Rui Martins, Eulália Santos, Ana Morais
• Suzette Viviers, Lee-Ann Steenkamp

And last but not least a big thank you to our reviewers for providing with valuable time and efforts to our authors

• Habeeb Yahya
• Vasileios Pappas
• Valdone Darškuviene
• Biljana Pesalj
• Panagiotis Andrikopoulos
• Jaheer Mukthar
• Kyoko Sakuma-Keck
• Yury Blagov