Recently, Australia's parliament passed legal amendments to reform financial services in the country. Among the amendments was a rule requiring institutions managing retirement trust funds to tell investors to what extent they take social responsibility into account when they make investments.
"Social responsibility" here means the extent to which they consider labor, environmental, social and ethical standards when investing trust funds in a certain company. In addition, when these trust funds say their investments are socially responsible, they must also present a set of guidelines and tell the investors how they are undertaking those socially responsible investments.
In fact, Australia is not the first country to enact such legislation. The UK passed a similar law in 1999. Since that law came into effect in July 2000, about 60 percent of the UK's retirement trust funds have made social responsibility an important element of their investment policies. To quantify the figures, more than US$500 billion in retirement funds is now being invested in socially responsible companies.
We all know that pension funds are an important force in long-term stock market investment. When their investment criteria are no longer limited to business profits, know-how and market potential -- when non-market "moral factors" also become important -- share prices can then reflect whether a company is being social responsible. The emergence of such legislation in the UK and Australia reflects a new form of social activism taking shape in the Western world. These new social movements include the environmental, Aboriginal, homosexual and labor rights movements.
To lower labor and environmental costs, major companies in the West outsource manufacturing work to developing countries. To attract foreign investment, developing countries do their best to lower wages and environmental standards so that they can meet the demands of the multinationals. This has resulted in violations of labor rights, such as the use of child labor, forced labor and corporal punishment.
To stop this development, many "anti-sweat" movements have emerged in Europe and in the US. They urge people not to buy clothes, shoes, cosmetics, toys and other products made by exploited "sweatshop" workers. Because of these movements, major brand names in the West are beginning to set up "codes of labor" and require their manufacturers to abide by them.
This trend breaks the pattern of thinking that we are used to: the idea that increased labor welfare will invariably lower competitiveness. According to the investment models of the British and Australian retirement funds, only when a company improves labor welfare can it realize its true value because only then are the retirement funds willing to invest.
By contrast, socially irresponsible companies will gradually be abandoned and lose orders as well. During her visit to Taiwan last year, futurist scholar Hazel Henderson, told me that a Swiss investment company under her direction had established a set of investment principles in 1973, whereby they avoided investing in any company with a history of violating environmental regulations.
Henderson said that people at the time thought they were crazy, but after 30 years, they are one of the very few high-return investment companies in Europe.
Can our businesses and states still say, "Welfare will undercut competitiveness" when social responsibility is becoming an increasingly important standard for investment?
Wang Hong-zen is an assistant professor of future studies at Tamkang University.
Translated by Francis Huang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS