Researchers:
Biel, Anders
Hedesström, Martin

This project has reviewed to what extent common criteria are used when assessing companies’ social and environmental performance. Included in our sample were analysts, index providers and independent organisations setting standards for Swedish institutional investors. The two most engaged analysts among Swedish SRI funds are Global Ethical Standards (GES) and Innovest (formerly Coreratings). In addition, some institutional investors depend upon Ethibel, index providers (e.g., FTSE4 Good, SAM and Dow Jones Sustainability Indices), and/or the independent organisations Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

Input to our comparison comes from official documents, web pages and, in some cases, interviews with representatives from the analysts. This comparison includes the foundation in international standards and guidelines, specific environmental and social indicators, how data are collected, evaluated and reported to the investors. The reliability and validity of these issues are discussed. As for reliability, agreement is hard to establish since agencies do not reveal all criteria used and also partly use different criteria. As for validity, one important issue is to what extent presently used environmental and social criteria capture social and environmental effects of company activities.

An article has been written on the definition and application of SI in the investment community. This work will be extended to include definitions of assessment criteria that predict environmental risks from a sustainability perspective. The research will be carried out together with natural scientists at the Department of Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology.