Shareholder Activism for Sustainability - Expert Survey

Thank you in advance for participating as your feedback is important.

Why this survey?

The Luc Hoffmann Institute and SustainAbility are conducting a survey to explore perspectives on shareholder activism for sustainability and establish a baseline from which to assess the issue in the future. This survey is part of a broader set of activities under the Luc Hoffmann Institute project 'Shareholder Activism for Sustainability' aiming to convene diverse thinking and practice on the issue of shareholder activism and generate new insights into the relationship between of this critical issue and sustainability.

The issue

Our assumption is that shareholder activism, where shareholders influence a company’s decisions by exercising their rights as owners, has significant potential to influence global sustainability, negatively or positively.

Shareholder activism has focused primarily on matters such as executive pay levels, company structure or mergers and acquisitions. Often these efforts aim at immediate financial gain or short-term policies and can potentially hamper corporations’ longer-term sustainability efforts. At the same time, a growing number of investors are also engaging companies on sustainability or environmental, social or governance (ESG) issues, with increasing success.

Terminology

This survey defines 'shareholder activism' as shareholders purposefully making use of their rights to influence the behaviour of the company in which they hold shares. It uses a non-pejorative definition that includes activism for a wide range of objectives and delivered through varied mechanisms including voting in the annual general meeting (AGM), proposing shareholder resolutions or informal engagement with the company outside the AGM. This terminology is intended to be similar to “active investing” or “active ownership” which are also commonly used.

The survey title, 'Shareholder Activism for Sustainability' refers to the active pursuit of environmental, social and/or governance (ESG) objectives as shareholder.

Using this survey

This survey is being sent to a range of corporates, institutional investors, asset owners and asset managers. It will be distributed and analysed between April and May 2018.  All responses and comments provided as part of this survey will be treated as strictly anonymous unless explicit permission is given and we will not use any other identifiable information (e.g. name of organisation or city/town location) when communicating outputs.  The data analysis will be aggregated at a category level (such as sector focus, stakeholder group, etc).  

This survey will be used to inform ongoing research and analysis being undertaken by the Luc Hoffmann Institute and SustainAbility and the data may be collated and included in future research outputs.

A different version of the survey on the same issue is being sent to NGOs and civil society organisations focused on addressing sustainability or ESG challenges.

This survey will take around 15 minutes to complete

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this survey please contact Elisabeth Losasso via elosasso@wwfint.org.

(Image credit: © PEW Institute)