Morality in Times of Uncertainty

Behavior 'in Christ' happens in time. This chapter elucidates how Peter structures his exhortation around behavior in the nation, in the household, and in the body. But the placement of those pieces in the larger picture makes more sense if attention is first paid to an over-arching domain, one that permeates the rest. That domain is time; Peter roots Christian morality in time. Peter uses concepts of time and space and motion to structure and communicate his moral exhortation. The chapter considers some of the complexities of the time metaphors Peter uses, focusing on what they contribute to his moral discourse. It argues that, because Peter repeatedly connects time and events with moral action and its consequences, time constitutes a morally significant living space that is qualified in specific ways.Keywords: Christ; Peter

This article analyses the development, regulatory framework and perspectives of social bonds as innovative instruments of sustainable financing. Social bonds are used to channel capital into projects with clearly defined social benefits, such as job creation, affordable housing, healthcare and education. Their growth reflects the increasing alignment of financial markets with environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles while addressing pressing societal challenges. The discussion emphasises the role of international standards and the European regulatory framework in ensuring transparency, accountability and measurable results. In that context, digitalisation and new tools such as artificial intelligence can improve monitoring and impact reporting, strengthening investor confidence. By analysing their contribution to mobilising resources for socially inclusive projects, the paper highlights how social bonds support both financial returns and long-term social value creation

It is often said that investment management is an art, not a science. However, since the early 1990s the market has witnessed a progressive shift toward a more industrial view of the investment management process. There are several reasons for this change. First, with globalization the universe of investable assets has grown many times over. Asset managers might have to choose from among several thousand possible investments from around the globe. The S&P 500 index is itself chosen from a pool of 8,000 investable U.S. stocks. Second, institutional investors, often together with their investment consultants, have encouraged asset management firms to adopt an increasingly structured process with documented steps and measurable results. Pressure from regulators and the media is another factor. Lastly, the sheer size of the markets makes it imperative to adopt safe and repeatable methodologies. The volumes are staggering. Keywords: non-normal probability distributions; quantitative modeling; information overload; unstructured (textual) information; semistructured information

Knowledge rules for paper/oil insulated high voltage (HV) power cables are necessary to support asset management decision processes. For development of these knowledge rules investigation has been done into a diagnostic method, for integral condition assessment of paper/oil insulation to DC voltage charging. This method is called the recovery voltage measurement and is based on the dielectric response of cable insulation. In the recovery voltage (RV), parameters have been investigated on possibility to indicate insulation degradation. In this paper single and periodic measurements with different temperatures have been performed. These measurements result in the conclusion that an increase in insulation degradation can be observed by selected recovery voltage parameters as well as dielectric losses behavior in function of test voltage. Measurement results of HV power cables performed at two temperatures can be used in line with dielectric losses measurements to support condition assessment.

This paper discusses how financial and social returns can be measured in relation to asset management in Dutch housing associations. The potential applications of performance measurement in housing asset management are assessed as well as the indicators that can be used to measure financial and social returns. An explorative survey among Dutch housing associations indicates that practice is poorly developed. As far as the measurement of financial return is concerned, a few associations operate in accordance with the theoretical 'ideal'. However, many of them still follow a traditional book-keeping approach, which is unsuitable for supporting asset management decisions. As far as social return is concerned, the survey indicates that, although associations collect a lot of data, they do not really evaluate their performance by comparing their output against pre-set targets or benchmarks. The poorly developed evaluation of performance makes it difficult for housing associations to achieve the various objectives offered by performance measurement within their own asset management. This, in turn, hampers both internal and external accountability, raises questions about the impact of municipal performance agreements and indicates that housing associations are not actively striving to use their financial surpluses in the interest of housing.

Using data collected from interviews with asset managers in Europe and the United States, this paper explores the tension between asset managers’ fiduciary duty towards their ultimate investors and their own need to maintain a social license to operate. It documents shareholder attempts to redefine the understanding of the concept of fiduciary duty in order to ease this tension and corporate efforts to resist this. Asset managers’ response to social pressures has been to focus exclusively on financial returns, targeting ‘value not values’. However, such an approach violates the fact/value dichotomy, which dictates that it is impossible to separate business considerations from ethics. Instead this paper advocates for the largest asset managers to acknowledge the social responsibilities that result from their large shareholdings. With growing number of households investing in funds and an ever-greater proportion of these assets intended for retirement, a new understanding of fiduciary duty is required.

When I started Triple Bottom Line Investing (TBLI) nearly 20 years ago, I wanted TBLI Group’s mission to create an inclusive values based economy. The Triple bottom line approach. All investments should provide a financial, social and environmental return, and not only a financial return. Since 1996, the Triple Bottom Line Group (TBLI) has been building the ecosystem for the Impact Investing and Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) community, providing advisory, educational services and networking events. One of the star products is the TBLI CONFERENCE, which is the longest-running global forum bringing together investors, asset managers and thought leaders in sustainable finance.

The Fund for Employees (FGTS) was created by the Federal Government of Brazil to "protect" the worker fired without just cause. According to the rules, the account balance of FGTS is formed by monthly and mandatory deposits made by the employer. Employees can withdraw their money at particular moments, as defined by the government. This article aims to analyze the real effects of this regulation in Brazil and evaluate the benefits of extinguishing this fund. This government intervention interferes in the environment of voluntary exchanges between employees and employers, increasing the cost of the worker. It also creates the adverse effect of increasing turnover in the labor market because it encourages the worker to act in a way that motivates a dismissal to gain access to this resource. The preference for resources at present is observed when analyzing the results of the resource flexibility measure that took place in 2019. More than 12 million workers chose to anticipate receiving their resources. In addition, the financial return of the FGTS is very low for its shareholders. The data show that the money stuck in the FGTS yields below the average returns of similar risky applications. Who gains from this is the government, which can use the cheap resources of this fund. This way, the end of the FGTS in Brazil would significantly improve productivity and allocations in the Brazilian labor market.

Portfolio optimization processes help managers understand the costs of achieving performance goals and the trade-offs in the performance of one business measure versus other business performance measures. A good portfolio optimization process makes it possible to negotiate goals and constraints on important key performance measures interactively and collaboratively, at the same time being fully aware of the price being paid to achieve one goal at the expense other goals. This article advocates a gradient search process, instead of a traditional linear programming or mixed integer linear programming methods to build thousands of optimum portfolios from an inventory of investment opportunities. The performance levels of those portfolios are then analyzed interactively with a visualization tool to negotiate collaboratively the trade-offs between goals and resource levels for the corporation or business unit. The portfolio visualization process described in this article begins by asking asset managers to define different operational strategies and acceptable performance exchange rates for various key performance measures. Combinations of operational strategies and performance exchange rate strategies each create a portfolio strategy and a gradient in a multidimensional resource space. For each portfolio strategy, the gradient search (or greedy algorithm) creates dozens of optimum portfolios, each at different resource levels and with different results in key performance measures. Thousands of optimal candidate portfolios are created and stored, and the coupled visualization tool enables them to be interactively and collaboratively filtered. This powerful combination of technologies allows asset managers to explore the effects of resource constraints and performance goals at specified levels of confidence on dozens of key performance measures against thousands of potential portfolios generated by the gradient search. Managers can negotiate corporate and unit goals and budgets by knowing what portfolios are possible and what trade-offs exist between the unit's key performance measures. The visualization process allows managers to quickly select several portfolios they find equally acceptable and from those portfolios determine (1) which projects are common to all or most of the selected portfolios, indicating high priority; (2) which opportunities are members of only a few of the portfolios, indicating they are valuable but substitutable; and (3) which opportunities are absent from all the chosen portfolios and are thus low priority. The ability to quickly categorize the opportunities from a collection of superior portfolios gives managers high confidence in their investment decisions.

In this chapter, the investment industry’s latest perspective on sustainability (ESG) investing and financial returns is examined. The traditional view is that sustainability investing, and financial returns are fundamentally incompatible with each other and investors have to cede financial return potential in order to invest sustainably. However, before examining the merit of this view, it is important to clarify the definition of ESG investing, which encompasses a diversity of investment styles; and each style is likely to lead to distinct investment outcomes. Of similar importance is the quality of ESG data, especially in light of the many different ESG data providers in the marketplace, each using its own approach to compile sustainability scores. The chapter starts by reviewing the reasons for which there is an increased adoption of ESG investing in the asset management industry, given that this investment style is not new.KeywordsSustainabilityESG integrationImpact investingValues investingFinancial returnSustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)Financial risk

Today, in times of crises, Asset Management is gaining in importance. Industries and organizations are growingly concerned with understanding what combination of output, cost and reliability gives the best financial return to the business. Asset Management evolved from Maintenance Management to provide a holistic approach to managing the life of a physical asset. It is not focused only on maintenance and operations: today, Asset Management provides business framework and tools in order to improve and optimise the contribution of a physical asset to overall performance. Numerous international associations and institutes like The Institute of Asset Management - IAM London, EFNMS (Europe), GFMAM AM Council of Australia, ABRAMAN (Brazil), SMRP (USA), FIM (South America), GSMP (Arabian Gulf Region) and Croatian Maintenance Society, developed general principles to cover all stages of the asset management process including knowledge, governance, skills, practice, benchmarking, shareholders' value, etc. The common goal of all associations is transfer of knowledge through various programmes of education and certification for a new professional discipline - asset manager or asset governor. Asset Management is a concept intended to provide support to decision-makers to ensure efficiency and performance improvements; it draws from economics as well as engineering. Asset Management provides for the economic assessment of trade-offs between alternative improvements and investment strategies from the network or system-level perspective - that is, between modes and/or asset classes within modes. (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, 1996) [1]. The survey on implementation of Asset Management concepts in the Croatian companies was carried out on the sample of nine companies. It indicated that the Asset Management discipline is still in the early stage of development. The majority of companies set up organisational units, but integrated asset management activities are not present. Half of the surveyed companies designed their specific Asset Management strategies and policies but their implementation is at variable stage. (5 pages)

<p>Responsible investment (RI) is the investment strategy that incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the investment decision-making process (Hebb, Hawley, Hoepner, Neher, & Wood, 2015). RI has shifted from what was considered a niche market to become one of the fastest-growing areas of finance in many parts of the world (PRI, 2019b). However, a closer look at the development of RI and adoption rates in countries and regions reveals that RI is not commonly practised in sub-Sahara Africa (except for South Africa). This study explores the critical challenges for RI development in the retirement benefits sector of Kenya and, by engaging with a variety of key stakeholders, proposes how to overcome the identified challenges. It contributes to the literature on challenges for RI in a developing country by offering an in-depth case study of the retirement benefits sector.<br></p><p>My study employs qualitative methods to collect and analyse data collected from semi-structured interviews with 22 participants (asset managers, regulators and capital market experts, and a council member of the Association of Retirement Benefits Schemes of Kenya) as well as a collection of published documents by government agencies in Kenya. Also, I analysed 10 annual reports to assess the kind of ESG information that is disclosed by listed companies. My study explores, in particular, how actors in the retirement benefits sector conceptualise RI. It identifies the leading ESG factors in Kenya and draws on the business-case approach to RI to explore whether the participants consider those factors as material risk factors that present both risks and opportunities to the investment decision-making process. Further, my study identifies the specific barriers for RI development and proposes how to overcome them. </p><p>The findings show that participants define RI using several terminologies. This is consistent with the existing literature. My study finds that all participants consider corporate governance as a material risk factor that can impact the financial returns of a portfolio. However, most of the asset managers do not think that the environmental and social factors can present material risk factors to their investment decision-making process. Although over a third of the asset managers recognise that the environmental and social issues in Kenya present business opportunities to retirement benefits schemes, there is a shortage of well-structured assets in those areas. Further, this study identifies five specific barriers for RI development: diversification challenges; a lack of ESG data; a lack of demand/incentives; short-termism; and the demand for high financial returns and a lack of awareness and expert knowledge of RI practices. My study recommends that the National Treasury of Kenya develops RI policy for the entire finance sector. In addition, the findings support a recommendation for the Capital Markets Authority and the Retirement Benefits Authority to embark on capacity building programmes to educate the actors in the finance sector on RI strategies and to create awareness of the impact of ESG on financial returns in the long run. </p>

<p>Responsible investment (RI) is the investment strategy that incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the investment decision-making process (Hebb, Hawley, Hoepner, Neher, & Wood, 2015). RI has shifted from what was considered a niche market to become one of the fastest-growing areas of finance in many parts of the world (PRI, 2019b). However, a closer look at the development of RI and adoption rates in countries and regions reveals that RI is not commonly practised in sub-Sahara Africa (except for South Africa). This study explores the critical challenges for RI development in the retirement benefits sector of Kenya and, by engaging with a variety of key stakeholders, proposes how to overcome the identified challenges. It contributes to the literature on challenges for RI in a developing country by offering an in-depth case study of the retirement benefits sector.<br></p><p>My study employs qualitative methods to collect and analyse data collected from semi-structured interviews with 22 participants (asset managers, regulators and capital market experts, and a council member of the Association of Retirement Benefits Schemes of Kenya) as well as a collection of published documents by government agencies in Kenya. Also, I analysed 10 annual reports to assess the kind of ESG information that is disclosed by listed companies. My study explores, in particular, how actors in the retirement benefits sector conceptualise RI. It identifies the leading ESG factors in Kenya and draws on the business-case approach to RI to explore whether the participants consider those factors as material risk factors that present both risks and opportunities to the investment decision-making process. Further, my study identifies the specific barriers for RI development and proposes how to overcome them. </p><p>The findings show that participants define RI using several terminologies. This is consistent with the existing literature. My study finds that all participants consider corporate governance as a material risk factor that can impact the financial returns of a portfolio. However, most of the asset managers do not think that the environmental and social factors can present material risk factors to their investment decision-making process. Although over a third of the asset managers recognise that the environmental and social issues in Kenya present business opportunities to retirement benefits schemes, there is a shortage of well-structured assets in those areas. Further, this study identifies five specific barriers for RI development: diversification challenges; a lack of ESG data; a lack of demand/incentives; short-termism; and the demand for high financial returns and a lack of awareness and expert knowledge of RI practices. My study recommends that the National Treasury of Kenya develops RI policy for the entire finance sector. In addition, the findings support a recommendation for the Capital Markets Authority and the Retirement Benefits Authority to embark on capacity building programmes to educate the actors in the finance sector on RI strategies and to create awareness of the impact of ESG on financial returns in the long run. </p>

Most investors have a single goal: to earn the highest financial return. These socially-neutral investors maximize their risk-adjusted returns and would not accept a lower financial return from an investment that also produced social benefits. An increasing number of socially-motivated investors have goals beyond maximizing profits. Some seek investments that are aligned with their social values (value alignment), for example by only owning stock in companies whose activities are consistent with the investor’s moral or social values. Others may also want their investment to make portfolio companies create more social value (social value creation). The thrust of this essay is that while it is relatively easy to achieve value alignment, creating social value is far more difficult. The literature published by asset managers, foundations, and trade associations voices considerable optimism that socially-motivated investors can create social value, particularly through non-concessionary investments. We are skeptical about many of these assertions; their language is often too loose to support a disciplined assessment whether social value was created, and the absence of fees keyed to social, rather than financial, value creation fuels that skepticism. To address this problem, we first offer a taxonomy of socially-motivated investments so that investors can clearly articulate their goals, and asset managers can clearly articulate what they offer and how their performance should be measured. We then address three big questions. First, can investments in public companies create social value whether or not with concessions on return? Second, can investments in private companies create social value, again whether or not with return concessions? Third, can investors, working with socially motivated stakeholders, cause public companies to create social value?

Most investors have a single goal: to earn the highest financial return. These socially-neutral investors maximize their risk-adjusted returns and would not accept a lower financial return from an investment that also produced social benefits. An increasing number of socially-motivated investors have goals beyond maximizing profits. Some seek investments that are aligned with their social values (value alignment), for example by only owning stock in companies whose activities are consistent with the investor’s moral or social values. Others may also want their investment to make portfolio companies create more social value (social value creation). The thrust of this essay is that while it is relatively easy to achieve value alignment, creating social value is far more difficult. The literature published by asset managers, foundations, and trade associations voices considerable optimism that socially-motivated investors can create social value, particularly through non-concessionary investments. We are skeptical about many of these assertions; their language is often too loose to support a disciplined assessment whether social value was created, and the absence of fees keyed to social, rather than financial, value creation fuels that skepticism. To address this problem, we first offer a taxonomy of socially-motivated investments so that investors can clearly articulate their goals, and asset managers can clearly articulate what they offer and how their performance should be measured. We then address three big questions. First, can investments in public companies create social value whether or not with concessions on return? Second, can investments in private companies create social value, again whether or not with return concessions? Third, can investors, working with socially motivated stakeholders, cause public companies to create social value?