The Ethics of ESG

This book contains a collection of chapters that critically assesses the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement. It addresses moral, political, and legal questions about the legitimacy of ESG as a management strategy and as an investment strategy. While the prevailing view of ESG limits the assessment of social and environmental challenges to financial criteria, the chapters here examine the possibility that ethical considerations require that nonfinancial issues must be considered too. Some chapters explicitly argue that ESG strategies should focus on creating real-life impacts on morally significant problems like climate change, protecting basic human rights, and combatting corporate corruption. Other chapters instead examine the possibility that the long-term feasibility of ESG limits its moral ambitions, requiring that ESG be regarded only as a set of devices for minimizing relevant risk in way that protects financial gain. An overarching theme of the book is that ethical interpretations of the ESG movement are needed and likely to drive future social, political and legal developments relevant to ESG.