Sustainable Investing is fast becoming an essential method of generating long-term returns, moving beyond the negative approaches to socially responsible investing that have dominated the field. This book, our second on the subject, provides over 15 case studies of leading global investors and companies demonstrating how they successfully apply sustainability aspects to their core strategies. Learn from prominent thought leaders Dan Esty and Paul Hawken among others who have contributed key chapters. Our chapter on performance shows clearly how these strategies have been working once negative approaches are parsed out by those examining fund returns. This book also examines in great depth what data exists, and what's on the horizon, to best measure & capture sustainability successfully. Regional perspectives, including 3 chapters on Asia, and focuses on Canada, Australia, Africa & India are also included, as is a look across asset classes. Sustainable Investing, when performed with a positive perspective, has been outperforming the mainstream, unlike negative approaches designed to match benchmark returns. From eco-efficiency to sustainability-driven innovation and beyond, investors of all shapes & sizes need to know how best to position themselves for the radical market shifts underway.

The challenge of achieving sustainability is complex and multifaceted, with varying approaches and policies across different countries and industries. This lack of universal standards poses a significant obstacle to the global transition towards a sustainable future. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these disparities, highlighting the urgent need for cohesive and practical sustainability strategies. What sets Green Transition Impacts on the Economy, Society, and Environment apart is its comprehensive and unique solution to this pressing issue, offering a unified framework for sustainability that can be applied across diverse contexts. By gathering insights and approaches from researchers worldwide, this book provides a holistic view of sustainability, addressing critical issues such as climate change, energy security, and social responsibility. It offers practical solutions and case studies demonstrating effective strategies for achieving sustainability goals. Through this approach, the book aims to equip policymakers, practitioners, and researchers with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the complexities of sustainability in the 21st century.

Sustainable Investing is fast becoming the smart way of generating long-term returns. With conventional investors now scrambling to factor in issues such as climate change, this book captures a turning point in the evolution of global finance. Bringing together leading practitioners of Sustainable Investing from across the globe, this book charts how this agenda has evolved, what impact it has today, and what prospects are emerging for the years ahead. Sustainable Investing has already been outperforming the mainstream, and concerned investors need to know how best to position themselves for potentially radical market change.

A fast growing share of investors have recently widened their scope of analysis to criteria regarded as extra-financial. They are driven by different motivations. Adoption of sustainable investment strategies can be driven, on the one hand by the sole motivation to hedge portfolios against knowable risks by expanding the conceptual framework to incorporate the latest best practice in risk management. Other investors focus rather on a long-term view and make an active bet on societal change. Recent empirical research has shown that considering sustainability factors within investment practices does not come at a cost (i.e. through a reduced opportunity set) but allows for competitive returns. Furthermore, the growing market and resulting competition in the wake of sustainable investing going mainstream has the welcome effect to compress fees for such products. Hence, staying informed about recent trends in sustainable investing is imperative no matter what the main motivation is.

This thesis examines the concept of mission investing (MI) and thus the role the mission of nonprofit organizations (NPO) plays when fungible financial assets are invested. In contrast to the traditional separation of programming and investment policies, MI stands for the explicit inclusion of the organization's mission into financial decisionmaking. Although initially developed in the context of grantmaking foundations, the concept of MI can be applied to any NPO with fungible assets. NPO as mission-driven organizations differ substantially from regular "for-profit" companies in the way they evaluate organizational performance. Therefore, questions regarding the assessment of desirability and the evaluation of investment opportunities arise. This thesis consists of four articles which all answer a different sub-question regarding the concept and logic of MI and thus adds to a more profound understanding of nonprofit investment management and complements existing theoretical analyses with empirical findings on value-based portfolio selection. In their exploratory approach, these four essays contribute to a holistic understanding of how investment decisions within a mission-oriented organization should be planned and evaluated - independent of their social or financial nature. In applying a logic framework approach, it is shown that the strict separation of social (such as grants) and financial investments within NPO leads to a misallocation of scarce resources. Only by judging both types of investments based on their combined ultimate mission-related impact, an optimal allocation of the initial inputs can be achieved. Thanks to the linkage of both, social and financial investments, the evaluation of investments within NPO is not about either financial return or impact only, but everything in between (i.e., hybrid investments, such as venture philanthropy or impact investments). Further, this thesis also bridges linguistic gaps between nonprofit research and finance and supplies practitioners with insights on how to structure investment processes in NPO and what effects they may expect from mission-based portfolio selection. This allows for a more effective allocation of tax-exempt funds in terms of achieving higher degrees of mission-effectiveness.

The world economy is near a critical crossroads, as a rising China, the greatest-ever beneficiary of US-led capitalism, dreams to replace America's supremacy as a new hegemonic power with a non-liberal world order. This third volume of the trilogy on reformulating the ‘flying-geese’ theory explains how capitalism has changed industrial structures across the world. It asks whether the ‘flying-geese’ formation will survive the changes that have produced the East Asian miracle, and – as hoped – spread to Africa. Terutomo Ozawa’s reformulated 'flying-geese' theory explains structural changes as an innovation-driven, ratcheting-up process of economic growth and shows that market-driven multinational corporations are key players for a successful ‘flying-geese’ formation and structural transformation. The book argues that the ‘ladder’ of economic development must be conceived as a double-helix with inter- and intra-industry rungs, the latter embedding cross-border supply chains and adaptive innovations. A thorough exploration of the structural changes under Pax Britannica and Pax Americana – moving from ‘kicking away the ladder’ from emerging economies to then providing it – demonstrates that this trend engenders multinational corporations that can facilitate structural transformation, particularly in catching-up economies. Ozawa shows that China is now in the critical transitional period that requires more sophisticated institutional, socio-political setups, as well as more advanced knowledge and ethics to move from the lower to the higher rungs. This enlightening, accessible and timely conclusion to Ozawa’s trilogy will be of great interest to many, particularly those specialising in international business, economics, political science, and international relations. Academics and practitioners alike will find this an invaluable resource.