Sustainable Companies—Global Investors Adopting Green Investments

Dear colleagues,

Sustainable investing continues to attract large amounts of capital as investors want to contribute to positive change, such as reversing climate change, promoting social justice, and advocating for better governance. Given such strong investor demand for sustainable investing worldwide, the stakes are high to counter the ongoing concerns over greenwashing, in which companies overstate and exaggerate their positive impact on sustainability. It has become increasingly difficult for investors to see through greenwashing when companies present themselves as more sustainable or environmentally friendly than they really are.

Most corporate leaders understand that businesses have a key role to play in tackling urgent challenges such as climate change. However, many of them also believe that pursuing a sustainability agenda runs counter to the wishes of their shareholders.

Sustainable investing encompasses a menu of strategies that can be used in combination. Here are seven common ones:

• Negative/exclusionary screening;
• Norms-based screening;
• Positive/best-in-class screening;
• Sustainability-themed investing;
• Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration;
• Active ownership;
• Impact investing.

Several factors are driving the change: the size of investment firms; financial returns; growing demand; an evolving view of fiduciary duty; trickle-down within investment firms; and more ESG activism by investors.

Studies on the dynamics of sustainable performance involving green investment and corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment can create an interesting contribution to improving the financial performance of sustainable performance. This study is also expected to reveal the reasons why manufacturing companies are committed to producing quality sustainability reports (Indriastuti and Chariri, 2021; Asogwa et al., 2020; Eyasu et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2020; Cupertino et al., 2019; Ok and Kim, 2019; Viviani et al., 2019). Unfortunately, these research findings are contradictory, and most of the existing research ignores how green investment and CSR investment can improve the financial performance of the sustainable performance of a company (Cheema et al., 2017).

Furthermore, financial performance is also becoming a measure of a company’s success in operational activities (Lai and Wong, 2012).

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Green investment;
• Corporate social responsibility;
• Environmental performance;
• Environmental proactive strategy;
• Financial performance;
• Manufacturing companies;
• Stakeholder engagement.

Looking forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Cosimo Magazzino
Guest Editor

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• green investment
• CSR investment
• financial performance
• sustainable performance
• manufacturing companies