Religious Organizations as Shareholders: Salience and Empowerment

Jennifer Goodman

Chapter Chapter 9 in Shareholder Empowerment, 2015, pp 201-222 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract While a traditional agency approach tends to assume that shareholder interests are aligned, research highlights that shareholders are heterogeneous and divided in their demands (Anabtawi 2007; Barnea & Rubin, 2010; Williams & Ryan, 2007). A complete discussion of shareholder empowerment would therefore not be possible without including the role of responsible investment, a well established investment approach that represents more than $3.7 trillion in the United States, or more than 11 percent of the US’s total assets under management (USSIF, 2012). Religious organizations (ROs) have been credited with being the pioneers of responsible investment (Kreander, McPhail, & Molyneaux, 2004; Sparkes & Cowton, 2004). While neither the largest nor the richest type of shareholder, they are the most active filers of social issue resolutions in the United States (Proffitt & Spicer, 2006), consistently filing around 25 percent of all shareholder proposals (Copland & O’Keefe, 2013). Increasing media awareness of aligning the values and mission of an organization with its investment principles has also raised the profile of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and ROs in investment (BBC, 2013; Guardian, 2013; Thomas, 2011).

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Business Ethic; Corporate Governance; Institutional Investor; Hedge Fund (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37393-9_9

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137373939_9

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