Abstract
Are public pension funds taking sustainability values into serious consideration? This question is addressed by analyzing annual reports of The Council on Ethics in the Swedish public pension system, which has a clear mission from The Swedish Government to consider sustainability values. The council was established in 2007 and supports four funds with advice. This article studies empirically how the council’s expression of words connected to different values has changed over time as well as how it practically reasons in situations of value conflicts. The quantitative data shows that words indicative of “sustainability values” have considerably increased. As a contrast, the critical discourse analysis shows that the council often reasons in a general, loose way about preferable solutions, while more practical claims for action are largely lacking or are vague in relation to sustainable development. The underlying rationale is very much in line with the discourse of economic rationalism. Thus, the quantitative findings suggest an emerging sustainability discourse, while the qualitative analysis clearly indicates that an economic rationale continues to underpin the council’s practical reasoning. However, it is concluded that this is not a simple case of green washing documents but rather a slow train moving towards green institutional change.
Highlights
Large financial institutions—such as pension funds—play a key role in global capitalism by financing different types of economic activities around the world
Are public pension funds really taking sustainability values into serious consideration? A basic hypothesis is that the value conflicts between economic growth and social and environmental values have become increasingly apparent over the last decades and triggered a more conscious handling, in the financial system
This article examined The Council on Ethics, which is the key unit of the Swedish public pension system for supporting the funds in seriously considering sustainable development in their investment activities
Summary
Large financial institutions—such as pension funds—play a key role in global capitalism by financing different types of economic activities around the world. For green transformative change to happen, investors need to systematically incorporate sustainability criteria into their practices and develop new norms in service of biosphere stewardship [1,2]. Public pension funds have grown over the years and provide new possibilities for humanizing the economy and make it more sustainable [3]. They are in the position to affect the norms and the practical rationale of the financial market and seem increasingly prone to do so in relation to sustainable development goals [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Are public pension funds really taking sustainability values into serious consideration? A basic hypothesis is that the value conflicts between economic growth and social and environmental values have become increasingly apparent over the last decades and triggered a more conscious handling, in the financial system
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