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Exit versus voice – options for socially responsible investment in collective pension plans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2019

Peter Dietsch
Peter Dietsch*
Affiliation:
Département de Philosophie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

What do we owe participants in collective pension plans in terms of socially responsible investment (SRI)? This paper draws into question current conventional wisdom on SRI, which considers investor engagement a more effective strategy than divestment to change morally problematic corporate behaviour. More fundamentally, in light of reasonable disagreement about the objective of SRI, the paper argues that participants in collective pension plans are owed some kind of control over their investments. The final section considers four different institutional arrangements to respect this requirement in practice, ranging from democratic decision procedures to the availability of SRI alternatives.

Keywords

socially responsible investmentcollective pension plandivestmentshareholder engagementinvestor ethics profile
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 246 - 264
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019

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