Abstract
As discussed in Chapter 1, traditional Japanese corporations have to greater or lesser degrees become familiar with conceptualizing responsible businesses based on ethical self-discipline or guiding management precepts that are passed down in the business over generations, although these concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are likely narrow
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Conceptualization of SRI has been extended to sustainable and responsible investment. In this chapter, we do not identify these two concepts strictly but use SRI as a broad concept of responsible investment that includes both categorizations.
- 2.
In Japan, we contacted 78 fund management companies, including trust banks, life insurance companies, investment advisory companies, and investment trust companies between October and December 2003. The response rate was 61.5% and the total number of valid responses was 488. The German data were collected in April and June 2003, and of 66 German investment trust fund companies and pension fund management companies, 51 participated, yielding a response rate of 77.3% from 263 professional fund managers. We collected 148 responses from fund managers in the US between September 2003 and February 2004. We sent our questionnaire to the top 250 US firms ranked by worldwide assets under management and we received responses from 148 fund managers of 74 different firms; the participation rate of US firms is 29.6%.
- 3.
The Social Investment Forum Japan (SIFJ) started in November 2003 as a non-profit organization to disseminate and develop SRI in Japan. The SIFJ changed its name to the Japan Sustainable Investment Forum (JSIF) in August 2013.
- 4.
The Valdez Principles are 10 principles that corporations should follow for natural environment protection. They were launched after the large-scale Valdez oil tanker spill in the Gulf Mexico in 1989.
- 5.
According to statistics of the Social Investment Forum Japan (2011, p. 89), among publicly offered SRI investment trusts at the end of September 2011, approximately 75% of the net assets of funds focused on trusts that use environmental standards for screening.
- 6.
On April 7, 2014, a council of Financial Services Agency (Council of Experts Concerning the Japanese Version of the Stewardship Code) published Japan’s Stewardship Code.
- 7.
This survey questionnaire was sent to 1462 pension plans during the period from 12 July 2007 and 24 August. There is a valid response rate of 32.5% (Research Institute for Policies on Pension & Aging 2008).
References
Bikhchandani, S. and S. Sharma. 2001. Herding behavior in financial markets. IMF Staff Papers 47 (3): 279–310.
Chevalier, J. A. and G. D. Ellison. 1999. Career concerns of mutual fund managers. Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (2): 389–432.
Davis, E.P., and B. Steil. 2001. Institutional investors. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA). 2014. 2014 Global Sustainable Investment Review. http://www.gsi-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/GSIA_Review_download.pdf. reprieved in Jan 2018.
Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA). 2016. 2016 Global Sustainable Investment Review. (http://www.gsi-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/GSIR_Review2016.F.pdf). reprieved in Jan 2018.
Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF). 2017. GPIF Selected ESG Indices (July 3, 2017). Retrieved in January 2018. http://www.gpif.go.jp/en/topics/pdf/20170703_esg_selection_en.pdf.
Hansen, G.S., and C.W. Hill. 1991. Are institutional investors myopic? A time series study of four technology driven industries. Strategic Management Journal 12 (1): 1–16.
Hong, H., J. D. Kubik, and A. Solomon. 2000. Security analysts’ career concerns and herding of earnings forecast. The Rand Journal of Economics 31 (1): 121–144.
Japan Sustainable Investment Forum (JSIF). 2015. JSIF White Paper on Sustainable Investment in Japan 2015. Retrieved in January 2018. http://japansif.com/2015whitepaper.pdf.
Kasuga, S. 2014. Relationship between fiduciary responsibility and exercising voting right. Financial Research Center (FSA Institute) Discussion Paper, 2014(3), Financial Services Agency, Government of Japan, retrieved in January 2018 (in Japanese). (http://www.fsa.go.jp/frtc/seika/discussion/2014/03.pdf).
Research Institute for Policies on Pension & Aging. 2008. Research Report on SRI and PRI (SRI oyobi PRI nikansuru Chosahoukokusho) (in Japanese). http://www.nensoken.or.jp/pastresearch/pdf/sripri_houkokusyo.pdf. Retrieved in Jan 2018.
Scharfsten, D., and J. Stein. 1990. Herd behaviour and investment. American Economic Review 80 (3): 465–479.
Social Investment Forum Japan (SIFJ). 2007. Annual report of social investment forum Japan (Nihon SRI Nenpo) (in Japanese). http://japansif.com/2007.pdf. Retrieved in Jan 2018.
SIFJ. 2009. 2009 Review of socially responsible investment in Japan. http://japansif.com/2009review.pdf. Retrieved in Jan 2018.
SIFJ. 2011. 2011 Review of socially responsible investment in Japan. http://japansif.com/2011review.pdf. Retrieved in Jan 2018.
Suto, M., L. Menkhoff, and D. Beckmann. 2005. “Behavioural biases of institutional investors under pressure from customers: Japan and Germany vs the US,” Working Paper Series, WIF-05006, Institute of Finance, Waseda University, Japan.
Suto, M., and M. Toshino. 2005. Behavioural biases of Japanese institutional investors: Fund management and corporate governance. Corporate Governance: An International Review 13 (4): 466–477.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Suto, M., Takehara, H. (2018). Responsible Investment and Institutional Investors. In: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Finance in Japan. Advances in Japanese Business and Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8986-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8986-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-8985-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-8986-2
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)