Institutional Investor (August 2)
“What do we mean when we say socially responsible investing?” Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing has been growing in popularity, but there is little agreement over how the social aspect should be reported by companies. There is, however, a push for companies to “do a better job of both considering and reporting on their social impacts…. less emphasis should be put on social outputs (for example, the number of bed nets provided to prevent malaria), and more on social impacts (the result or change that is a consequence of the outcome).” Social reporting is still in its infancy, much as environmental reporting was decades ago. In the future, it will be “important for companies to move the social impacts discussion up several notches to the board level, so that it can permeate all aspects of operations.”
Tags: Corporate boards, ESG, Social impacts, Social reporting, SRI
