Multi-stakeholder Project to Evaluate the Governance of Responsible Investment Institutions
This study looks at financial institutions who are signatories to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and which have programmes for investing money in sustainable development projects. This is called responsible investment (RI), and is part of an innovative business approach called environmental social governance (ESG). ‘Governance’ means the way in which these programmes are managed, or co-ordinated. The study will look at whether this is done in an effective way and how it might be improved. Our assessment of how stakeholders rate the performance of the RI sector as a whole, and the PRI framework/governing organisation in particular will help improve the quality of governance of RI.
The development of the PRI Principles in 2006 represents an important innovation in sustainable development. Likewise, our evaluation of the governance performance of the RI sector has the potential to contribute towards the continual improvement of this innovation. Our results will inform the policy agenda of the PRI and the RI sector.
Purpose
This project aims to:
- Explore the evolution of the concept of environmental social governance, and its expression within the responsible investment (RI) industry specifically.
- Using a set of principles, criteria and indicators of governance quality, it provides an analysis of stakeholder views on the performance of RI across a range of sectors (finance institutions, fund managers, insurers, investors, shareholders, government, NGOs), as well as one of the global leaders in the promotion of RI, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).
- That is, the project aims to provide a third party, fully independent study of the governance performance of the PRI and the RI sector as a whole.
The project will have a programme-relevant focus as it will contain some institutional capacity-building recommendations, and comment on the lessons learned from stakeholder participation and deliberation within RI programmes in relation to the broader governance of sustainability initiatives generally. Hence, the major anticipated outcome of the project is the improvement of the governance of responsible investment overall.
Funding
This research project is funded by an ACSBD Building Research Momentum Grant as well as in-kind contributions from the PRI
Contacts
Dr Tim Cadman: tim.cadman@usq.edu.au
Professor Julie Cotter: julie.cotter@usq.edu.au