[Socially Responsible Investing]
SRI tends to choose among investment
opportunities by applying moral categories to the products that companies
produce. This is an important first
step, but it is incomplete.
Benedict XVI in “Caritas in Veritate” (2009) challenged us “not only to create ‘ethical’ sectors or segments of the economy or the
world of finance, but to ensure that the whole economy – the whole of finance –
is ethical, not merely by an external label, but by its respect for
requirements intrinsic to its very nature.”
A complete approach, which
does respect those requirements, must
focus primarily on the working person. John Paul II wrote: “(the) human person is the
primary route that the Church must travel in fulfilling her mission… This, and
this alone, is the principle which inspires the Church’s social doctrine.”[1] The economic morality which will create wealth and spread it
universally is based on the attention that must be given to the working person,
his painful mastery of and gift of self to God in the service of others.
I would critique SRI in
that – by and large - it enters into the world of work from without only to
apply pre-formed moral categories to specific types of actions. It abstracts
from persons and their work who are the core of the economic moral center.
Benedict XVI has
pointed out that Catholic Social Doctrine “is based on man’s creation ‘in the
image of God.” Moral and socially
responsible investment has to go beyond applying moral categories to what a
company produces, and focus on the morality of the working person created in
the image of God and therefore called to give himself to others.
Let me offer a contemporary example of the working person
as moral center of economic life. Michael Winn, retired CEO of Hollister Corp.,
a billion dollar a year healthcare company
wrote in his “President’s Vision:”
“Developing, manufacturing and selling medical
products is not our business. Our business is to serve customers, both inside
and outside. Developing, manufacturing and selling medical products are the
activities we engage in in order to serve. We do not exist to make a profit.
This is not an end, but a means by which we can continue as a strong,
independently owned company. Our business purpose is to serve our customers and
the community as a whole.. Hollister will also be more personal as a working
environment… I view work not to be an occupation, but a vocation… not a
necessary chore for making a living, but an opportunity for personal
development and fulfillment.” Winn says, “I see… Hollister associates to be
persons in relationships of service to one another. They’re all united in a
common cause, each contributing his or her indispensable work, well done, so
that the individual efforts add up to a collective world-class result.”
I recognize, of course, that it is difficult to identify companies
that are actually inspired by a
person-centered approach like that described by Winn, but an investment philosophy that ignores
that aspect and judges the morality of investments solely or primarily on the
moral quality of the objects companies produce is merely re-arranging the deck
chairs on a sinking Titanic.
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