Values-Based Investing
We encourage the financial sector to diversify its own ranks, while also reforming ESG practices to better assess corporate social performance and protect vulnerable stakeholders, especially workers in global supply chains.
The Center’s program on investment aims to strengthen the social component of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing and stewardship—as well as to promote greater diversity within the financial world itself. We reject the conservative criticism of sustainability as “woke capitalism.” But we share the skepticism of good-faith critics that current ESG frameworks inadequately assess corporate performance. Our primary goal is to reform ESG investment in ways that clarify its social component and incentivize businesses to improve their treatment of vulnerable stakeholders, especially workers in global supply chains. Along the way, the financial sector needs to improve its own respect for diversity in the workplace.
Publications
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Knight Diversity of Asset Managers Research Series: Higher Education 2024
A new paper by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, Knight Foundation, and Global Economics Group examines how or if 50 of the wealthiest U.S. colleges and universities invest their endowment funds with diverse-owned asset management firms.
Making ESG Real: A Return to Values-Driven Investing
Our most recent report on ESG, written by Michael Goldhaber, explains the historical wrong turn taken by ESG investors and proposes ways to re-prioritize the protection of the environment and society.
Knight Diversity of Asset Managers Research Series: Higher Education, Interim Release
An interim study on the degree to which the endowments of the country’s wealthiest private and public colleges and universities are hiring asset management firms owned by women and racial or ethnic minorities
Seeking A ‘Smart-Mix’: Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence
In our white paper, we delve into the role of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSIs) in defining and implementing industry-specific human rights standards, highlighting their potential to shape meaningful corporate practices with government support.
Making ESG Work: How Investors Can Help Improve Low-Wage Labor And Ease Income Inequality
Our report explains how outsourcing has reshaped corporate workforces in ways that ESG assessments do not adequately capture and proposes a new approach to addressing this gap.
Putting The ‘S’ In ESG: Measuring Human Rights Performance For Investors
The Center published an in-depth study of 12 leading frameworks for assessing companies’ social practices and impacts. It found that current measurement focuses on what is most convenient rather than most meaningful. Ninety-two percent of measures looked at company governance structures without any attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of those structures.
Press
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Quick Takes
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Teaching Resources
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RFK Compass, June 2023: Applying ESG in the Meat Processing Industry
This exercise focuses on Packers Sanitation Services and Blackstone Core Equity Partners, exploring what accountability measures should be in place to address the exploitation of child labor.
Past Events
See allIncreasing Diversity in Asset Management Firms for University Endowments
11 AM - 1 PM