WORKING
CAPITAL:
CAN
SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING MAKE A GREAT LEAP FORWARD?
Marshall Glickman,
Marjorie Kelly. E : the Environmental Magazine.
The basic premise of socially responsible
investing is simple: If money makes the world go 'round, greener, more humane
investments can improve the way it spins. Want sustainably
managed forests? Provide loans or capital to eco-minded timber companies. Want
Monsanto to get out of the genetic engineering business? Buy Monsanto stock and
put forward a shareholder resolution demanding the company cease and desist.
This isn't just wishful thinking; social investors can point to many positive
efforts like these. And their strength is building. Yet before hailing a new
era of green capitalism, it's also important to understand some of its
limitations.
Socially responsible investing (SRI) is
something of a curious hybrid. Part capitalist outlet, part activist tool
working within constraints that are mostly oblivious to anything nonfinancial, it is often misunderstood, even by those who
support it. Its not-quite-fish, not-quite-fowl status leaves some wanting it to
do more and others to overestimate what it can do. And in its own way, each
view prevents social investing from fulfilling its potential.
THE THREE-LEGGED
STOOL
Traditionally, socially responsible
investing has been described as a three-legged stool made of stock screening
(avoiding the stock of bad-actor companies), shareholder activism (exercising
your rights as a stockholder to make positive changes), and community investing
(banking with institutions that loan money to worthwhile projects). Presumably,
this stool is built to realign and hold an enlightened economy. It's an
appealing metaphor, but a bit misleading.
For starters, an image of a stool
suggests that each leg is of equal strength and that they all work together in
some coordinated way. In fact, some legs are considerably more developed than
others and each strategy works independently of the others. There can even be
some tension between SRI tactics (but not the goals of its practitioners, who
sometimes work on all three fronts). For example, stock screening requires
avoiding or divesting yourself of companies you don't like, while shareholder
activism demands investing in public corporations whose actions you're trying
to change.
Another problem with the stool analogy is
it implies that the three SRI pillars are strong enough to support a
sustainable, truly healthy economy. Alas, this doesn't seem possible. That will
require deeper, more fundamental changes and legislative action.
So is there a better analogy than a
stool? We think so, but before offering an alternative metaphor and some ideas
about how SRI might become even more effective, let's look more carefully at
the three main tools available to social investors.
PORTFOLIO
SCREENING
Although ethical investing can be traced
back to 17th century Quakers who refused to invest in businesses selling
armaments, the modern SRI movement was launched in 1971 with the Pax World Fund, essentially as a vehicle for stock
screening. Started by ministers protesting the Vietnam War, Pax
investors felt it was wrong to own stock in companies like napalm-maker Dow
Chemical. So they created a mutual fund that screened out what they considered unsavory companies-including tobacco, alcohol, gambling and
weapons makers. Over time, filters and research on corporate responsibility
have grown more sophisticated to include environmental responsibility, women's
and gay rights, racial equality and animal testing. Almost 20 percent of SRI
mutual funds use some kind of environmental screening, either as one of many
screens or as their most important one.
The gist of screening your investments is
summed up with the maxim: Invest your principal with your principles. That
guideline can be applied to both stocks and bonds, and take the form of
positive or negative screens. Intuitively, screening seems like the best way
for an investor to express disapproval or support for a public company. If, for
instance, you're angry g with Procter & Gamble for testing its products on
animals, you'd either avoid their stock or, if you already owned it, sell it.
For a positive screen, you might consider adding Ballard Power Systems to your
portfolio if you look forward to the days when automobiles are powered by fuel
cells.
It's easy to see why this approach
appeals to investors with a conscience. And indeed, stock screening is by far
the most popular form of SRI. The question that has long dogged ethical
investors is: Do stock filters hurt returns?
In 1984, when socially conscious
investing was taking shape as an industry, Social Investment Forum (SIF) in
It's been a while since social investors
have had to endure such teasing (though old myths die hard: in july 2003, the New York Times ran an article by investing
newsletter watchdog Mark Hulbert, who used highly selective fund comparisons to
conclude screening for social factors hurts performance). Extensive research
and history shows that investing according to social screens doesn't harm
returns and may even improve them. These findings have been clearly borne out
by the success of the Domini Social Index (DSI),
which is a screened, slightly trimmed-down cousin of the S&P 500 (a roster
of 500 large companies that represents the stock market as a whole). For the 10
years through
In the
That message has gotten around, making
SRI the fastest-growing sector of the financial services industry. From that
$40 billion first surveyed in 1984, socially oriented portfolios had climbed to
$2.1 trillion by the end of 2002-a more than 5,000 percent increase. You don't
need a degree in economics to be impressed by $2.1 trillion, but for those made
numb by such large figures, consider that it's roughly the combined 2000 gross
domestic products (GDP) of
Almost all SRI mutual funds do negative
screening (avoiding irresponsible corporate players); less do positive screeningseeking out good-guy companies. For eco-minded
investors, there are a half-dozen funds (see sidebar)
that emphasize or focus on environmental issues. For example, Portfolio 21, run
by Progressive Investment of
What screening does is align your
portfolio with your values. While this makes instinctive sense and can
strengthen your convictions, there is a common misunderstanding about its
ability to directly bring about social change. It's an easy mistake to make;
after all, the unifying motto for the green money movement has been "vote
with your dollars." As a general rule, this is a good slogan to remember
when spending on most products and services: buying organic produce, taking
your clothes to a nontoxic dry cleaner, or purchasing
a gas-electric hybrid car not only reduces your own ecological footprint, it
directly supports important new industries. Conversely, boycotting Citibank
(and writing the company about it) until it stops underwriting environmentally
destructive construction projects is an effective method of protest. But simply
boycotting Citibank's stock or even selling your shares doesn't have the same
effect.
Here's why: in most cases, putting money
in the stock market isn't investing in the truest sense of the word, but
actually speculating. Buying shares in Ford, for example, doesn't mean Ford
gets the money and uses it to fund operations. It's more like you're buying a
1998 Taurus; the money goes to the previous owner of the car, not Ford itself.
The only time companies get your money is when they issue new stock-which they
do through initial or secondary public offerings. But among the Dow Jones
Industrials, only a handful of corporations have sold any new stock in 30
years. More than 99 percent of stock market activity is purely speculative.
DO THEY
CARE?
So the question is, does social
screening-that is, refusing to buy the stock of certain companies-really make
any difference to those companies? Basically, no. If a
large number of Monsanto shareholders, outraged over the company's genetically
modified products, dumped all their shares at the same time, the stock would
drop-but only briefly. As soon as other investors realized nothing had changed
about the corporation's financial condition, they would scoop Monsanto's shares
right back up.
Meir
Statman, chair of Santa Clara University's finance
department, who has studied the effect socially responsible investors have on
stock prices, explains that this is because what registers in the stock market
are earnings and prospects for future earnings; the market is blind to social
concerns (except as they affect earnings; for example, in the form of a lawsuit
or lost sales).
Consider what would happen, for instance,
if nearly all investors boycotted Wal-Mart's stock because the company sells
products made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC]). Let's say, hypothetically, the
stock dropped so much you could buy the whole company for $1 million or, since
this is theoretical, for $10,000. As long as Wal-Mart's sales stayed strong,
whoever bought it could take the company private and get the financial bargain
of the century. Such investors would actually be rewarded for ignoring social
concerns. Of course, Wal-Mart's stock would never even approach such amazing
prices since bargain hunters would have long before stepped in and gobbled up
shares. In other words, the stock market is driven by financial concerns and if
an issue doesn't register financially in some way, stock prices won't be
noticeably effected.
Statman's
theory is borne out by the performance of tobacco stocks. Did tobacco
divestment actually contribute to their declines? "Probably a little, but
not a lot," says Doug Cogan, director of the tobacco information service
for the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), an institutional
investor information service in Washington, D.C. he estimates that at most two
to five percent of tobacco shares have been sold through divestment. But to
actually affect prices, he says you'd need divestment of 60 to 70 percent of
shares.
Research seems to indicate that, if
anything, Cogan's estimate was generous. A 1998 Social Investment Forum study
on South African divestment-written by Slew Hong Tech, Ivo
Welch and C. Paul Wazzan-showed that when 16 large
pension funds in 1985 announced divestment from U.S. firms with large South
African operations, there was no measurable negative impact on stock prices. If
the goal is to hurt stock prices, "divestment is not the best tool,"
the researchers wrote. The bright news in this, SIF pointed out, is that it
means socially concerned investors aren't penalized financially. True enough.
Still, it makes one wonder what's the point?
Essentially, as already noted, the reason
is to be aligned with your principles. Obviously, you can't put a price tag on
moral consistency-nor should we underestimate its real-world power. It's a
strength that fueled Gandhi's success against the
British, Nelson Mandela's against apartheid, and Mother Teresa's ability to
create an institution and inspiration with global reach. Applied in a more
practical way, it allows us to make activist efforts without conflicts of
interest. If, for example, much of your net worth were invested in McDonald's,
you'd be unlikely to protest a new store opening in your neighborhood
or be as eager for the company to use unbleached paper if it impacted earnings.
The paper written by Tech, et. al.
concluded that, while divestment didn't hurt stock prices, it did help
"raise public moral standards and awareness of the repression of the
apartheid regime." Call it public pressure, call it the buzz factor at
work-but don't minimize it.
Since it works in a big picture kind of
way, the impact of screening is hard to measure. "What social investors do
is bring social and environmental issues into business decision-making,"
says Alisa Gravitz, executive director of Coop
America and vice president of SIR One way SRI does this is by demonstrating
that socially oriented companies are well-managed firms that can get excellent
returns.
Stock screening also adds to a more
civilized business climate by creating watchdogs that monitor corporate behavior. "The whole process of screening creates a
need for social and environmental information on companies," says Simon BiIlenness of Trillium Asset Management in
SRI has also provided an immeasurable
service from the attention it has created in the culture at large. One of the
great successes of SRI has been to get people to realize that ethical and
environmental issues can be part of a corporation's mission. This has paved the
way for some of
For many companies, it has become a
regular practice to issue reports on environmental stewardship, racial equality
and diversity, and animal testing. Some Fortune 500 companies have added whole
departments to address these concerns. "You can go to the websites of
companies such as BP Amoco and Ford and see a real change in attitude,"
says Tim Smith, former executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate
Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of religious organizations that has
coordinated shareholder resolutions for 30 years. More than 70 companies,
including Sunoco, General Motors, Arizona Public Service and Bank of
Companies don't necessarily change
overnight after they sign CERES. GM, for instance, has come under fire from the
group for failing to increase fuel efficiency. CERES board member Ariane Van Buren of ICCR says, "We want to see GM
apply the same 'can-do' spirit [it used in developing new environmental
technology] to increasing the fuel economy of the many cars it's putting on the
road now."
Organizations like CERES are poised to
play an ever-larger role, as more and more corporations
grasp that social issues must in fact be integral to business itself. Recent
evidence for this trend comes from the Millennium Poll released by The
Conference Board in
SHAREHOLDER
ACTIVISTS
If stock screening contributes to
changing corporate behavior in an undefinable,
bigger-picture way, shareholder activism offers the opportunity for what SIF's Gravitz calls a
"laser-beam focus" on particular companies. This allows investors to
see clear results from their efforts.
One of the best-known cases of effective
shareholder activism is Rainforest Action Network and cohorts' drive to have
Home Depot commit to phasing out the sale of old-growth lumber (see sidebar).
But shareholder activists have had other notable successes for the environment.
They've influenced General Electric to allot $150 to $250 million for cleaning
up polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) polluting the Housatonic
River in the Northeast; they've motivated Universal Health Services of
Pennsylvania, the country's third-largest hospital management company, to
formally request that its suppliers phase out the toxic PVC in medical
products; and they have persuaded Ford, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and
Texaco to quit the Global Climate Coalition-an organization that undermined
efforts to curb global warming.
Shareholder activism has been described
as the muscle in SRI. Or as Peter Kinder of KLD Research & Analytics once
noted, shareholder activism works like the two-by-four whacked against an Ozark
mule in old farmer jokes: it gets a corporation's attention. Alisa Gravitz of Co-op
Shareholder activism works best in
conjunction with other activist efforts such as consumer boycotts and
letter-writing campaigns, and it is an excellent complement to these efforts
because the corporation is being "attacked" from within. Since all
shareholders are part owners of the company, they have limited rights to
comment on corporate policies. So even if you own only one share of Microsoft
(the equivalent ownership stake of Bill Gates' closet door knob), you're
allowed to attend annual shareholder meetings, ask questions at that meeting
and vote on any issues before shareholders (which can be done via mail or the
Internet).
Up your ownership stake to $2,000 worth
of stock and, if you follow the proper protocol, you can propose a non-binding
corporate resolution-a shareholder referendum for a policy change. Or, as a
mutual fund investor, your fund can do this for you. Recently, for example,
Calvert Funds-a family of socially screened funds with excellent environmental
criteria-worked with others to file a resolution with Hewlett-Packard, asking
the company to prepare a report on the feasibility of a comprehensive product takeback policy. And after a Green Century Balanced Fund
resolution, PepsiCo agreed to roll out a new lid that will save 25 million
pounds of aluminum annually. As a shareholder in such
proactive funds, you get a representative for these kinds of discussions with
companies.
One of the most significant ways ethical
investors could leverage their strength is to engage in more shareholder
activism. "Up until recently, the ICCR has done most of the heavy lifting
themselves," says Conrad MacKerron, "but
within the last few years we have seen funds step up to the plate." Led
largely by Domini and Calvert, socially concerned
mutual funds have come to recognize the importance of shareholder activism.
But the industry hasn't made full use of
its strength. According to the Social Investment Forum's 2003 survey, only 20
percent of SRI money is used in shareholder advocacy. This is actually a
decrease from almost 40 percent in 2001-though there were more resolutions
filed (from 261 in 2001 to 320 in 2003) and the resolutions introduced got more
votes (from 8.7 percent in 2001 to 11.4 percent in 2003). It seems those practicing shareholder activism recognize its power:
they're using it more and getting better at gaining support for the issues they
raise. Environmental questions and ethical employment issues were the most
frequently raised proposals/resolutions.
Some funds and most money managers who
handle individual portfolios don't do any shareholder activism at all.
"Some of these funds are what I call 'SRI Lite,'"
says First Affirmative Financial Network President Steve Schueth.
For instance, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement
Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), which handles roughly $291 billion in pension funds,
manages more than $5.4 billion in its Social Choice account, the country's
biggest socially screened portfolio. But Schueth
adds, "TIAA-CREF only avoids the worst of the worst; it's not about social
change. Vanguard is another one; its new social index emulates one from
Calvert, but this is not a fund that will do shareholder activism or community
development."
Smaller funds and many money managers
contend that they can't afford it. Domini and Calvert
each have a billion or more under management and can hire a staff devoted to
shareholder activism, they say. "Shareholder activism is very
time-consuming and expensive," says Kathy O'Connor, a fund manager at Towneley Capital. "I personally don't have time to be
a shareholder activist."
There are possible solutions to address
the challenges a smaller SRI money management firm faces to engage in
shareholder activism. Either they could pool resources and share activist
coordinators, or perhaps they could contract with an independent nonprofit to do it for them. This outside agent could
coordinate efforts with other social investors and nonprofit
groups that use grassroots non-financial tactics. The most obvious candidates
for such a coordinator would be the Social Investment Forum, As You Sow-a nonprofit that promotes progressive social and
environmental policies by representing the interests of socially concerned
investors, or ICCR, which has 30 years of experience waging shareholder
advocacy campaigns and orchestrating coalitions of investors.
Fund managers can also communicate with
companies without using formal resolutions. Progressive Investment, which
manages Portfolio 21, is relatively small with $ 148 million in assets. Yet in
2002 it wrote many letters, including to AstroPower
urging that it use recycled semiconductor wafers, to senators voicing
opposition to garbage burning, and to the securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) to encourage a round-table on environmental and
social transparency. As an investor, your fees can help support this activity.
You have the right to insist your mutual fund or management
company be in active dialogue on your behalf.
Perhaps what's needed is an independent
agency that certifies money management firms are making shareholder activist
efforts appropriate to their size. So while a large SRI fund might have a
department devoted to activism, a small operation might just donate a percentage
of its management fees or client assets to support groups that do shareholder
advocacy. Ironically, the SRI industry is only likely to adopt such a scenario
if ethical investors create a grassroots effort to let money managers know this
matters to them-and then vote with their dollars by supporting firms that are
willing to move in that direction.
COMMUNITY
INVESTING
While stock screening and shareholder
activism are directed toward large corporations, community investing is about
funding worthwhile projects and supporting individuals-in some ways making this
the most inspiring form of SRI.
Consider the story of David Royster, 40, who lives in
Loans on an even smaller scale than Royster's can also have an enormous impact. In 1974,
Muhammad Yunnus, an economics professor at
Professor Yunnus
lent the women a few dollars to free her from that burden. Within a few months
she paid the loan back and Grameen Bank was born.
Since then, Grameen has loaned out billions of
dollars (significant amounts used to finance small-scale appropriate technology
that encourages self-reliance and improved efficiency, which is typically human
powered), grown to more than 1,100 branches, and has more than two million
members. Borrowers don't need collateral to get a loan, but they do need to be
part of a small group that guarantees each other's loans. The repayment rate is
an impressive 97 percent.
Since Grameen
formed more than 25 years ago, many other like-minded microlending
institutions have sprouted, including dozens in the
For instance, Self-Help loaned money for
buying equipment to R24 Lumber company, a
minority-owned business that remanufactures discarded wood into useable wall
studs. Other banks with a strong or exclusive focus on loaning money to
environmentally oriented businesses or nonprofits include Shorebank
Pacific in Washington, Chittenden Rank's Socially
Responsible Division in Vermont, Permaculture Credit
Union in New Mexico and Wainright Rank in
Massachusetts.
While most community investing is done
through banks and credit unions, there are also loan funds and trusts. Interest
rates can be market level or below, with the choice often at the discretion of
the borrower. And because risk is pooled, these tend to be safe investments.
They're akin to buying a certificate of deposit, with the added benefit of
knowing your money is being put to use making the world better. Ib invest in a variety of loan funds at once, the Calvert
Social Investment Foundation (a nonprofit
organization independent of Calvert Funds) offers professionally managed notes
(debt instruments).
One of the wonderful things about
community investing is that almost anyone can participate. all
you need is a checking or savings account to put your money into deserving
hands. Yet, despite this relatively easy access, the biggest problem with
community investing is that not enough investors do it. To quote the SIF 2003
survey again, only two-thirds of one percent-or $14 billion of the $2.1
trillion invested by socially conscious investors-is in community investing. To
boost this important sector, SIF and Co-op
To help support this effort, SIF has
developed a community investing logo (a half-circle of human figures holding
hands, connected to a house) that identifies its members with at least one
percent of managed assets in community investments. Consider adding this as a
criterion when selecting your investments. It's another way to use your dollars
to help push the SRI community to make more of a real difference.
THE NEXT
STEP
While it's nice to linger over victories,
with so much work to be done it seems more important to ask: how can SRI
successes be repeated and multiplied? Is there a way to consistently steer
large corporations toward sustainability and more enlightened behavior? After all, even if dozens of big businesses have
signed on to the CERES principles, that leaves many thousands of public
corporations which have not. So while Home Depot moves toward greater
environmental awareness,
Consider Enron-not as the poster child of
corporate misdeeds-but to look at the atmosphere that helped create its
implosion. By looking at the forces that allowed the Enron scandal to happen,
we can better understand the challenges social investors or any economic
tide-turners face.
Before its collapse, Enron was considered
a model socially responsible company, and its stock was in many SRI mutual
funds when it went down. As professor Sandra Waddock
of
Enron fooled us. But that's not the real
point here. The point is that all the things SRI has been measuring and
screening for and applauding miss something fundamental going on inside
companies-and that something is the unremitting pressure to get the numbers by
any means possible. The biggest difficulty SRI faces is that it operates on an
unspoken assumption that managers have genuine freedom to be socially
responsible. But in many cases, they don't. Can Ford's CEO really stop
manufacturing SUVs if those vehicles are generating huge profits? As the
company's financial caretaker, that would be a breach of his fiduciary
responsibilities.
From the beginning, SRI has been about
separating the good guys from the bad guys. It's operated on the belief that
the white hats can be spotted by their exemplary policies and programs and
sustainability reports. But the lessons of Enron tell a different story.
Enron and other corporate scandals point
to system-wide pressure. It's not about good companies vs. bad companies, but
about the pressures that act on all public companies. The focus in SRI has been
on encouraging companies to voluntarily undertake responsible moves. But the
pressure to get the numbers is not voluntary. And that pressure comes from many
sources.
Pressures built within the structure of
companies often start from the top, with financial incentives for executives
that tend to be based on increasing short-term earnings-a motivator that often
works against the environment (since the initial costs of eliminating toxics
generally hurt the bottom line), not to mention the long-term health of the
company. Corporate boards rarely serve as an antidote to this lack of vision
since corporations don't choose directorates via real elections. The result is
management-selected yesmen and no employee
representation (and not even a way for them to run). At bottom, there's the
design of financial statements, which leaves nowhere to account for
"externalities" such as environmental effects, making them invisible.
Then there are pressures from state laws,
which often say corporate directors must maximize the bottom line-so when it
comes to choosing between spending on cleaning up the
But most of all, it comes from an
entrenched and antiquated system of taxation; one that derives most of its
revenue from taxing profits and income (which we should be trying to encourage)
instead of negatives like pollution. If carbon emissions were taxed, for
instance, businesses would quickly figure out clever ways to use less oil, gas
and coal. And if companies paid Uncle Sam based, at least partly, on their
waste and toxic releases, no doubt they'd reduce their ecological footprint.
Capitalism can work brilliantly; it just needs some tinkering.
Addressing these sorts of issues has
traditionally been beyond the scope of the SRI community-and understandably so,
given such issues tend to be better suited to think tanks and grassroots social
change organizations, lit, if the SRI industry hopes to truly live up to its
promise, in some fashion, it needs to work on the big picture, perhaps working
in conjunction with nonprofit groups that can focus
on system design issues.
There are even a few places where this is
already happening. The Corporate Sunshine Working Group, for example, is an
alliance of investors, environmental organizations, unions and public interest
groups working to enforce and expand SEC corporate social and environmental
disclosure requirements. The Global Reporting Initiative is a coalition of
businesses, nonprofits and government agencies working to set uniform, globally
applicable standards that measure environmental impact.
To support such efforts, SRI money
managers could allocate a small percentage of their fees or levy a tiny
"tax" on their clients' assets, earmarking those monies for
nonprofits that work at a structural level, such as Redefining Progress, an
economic policy and advocacy group. Just as the Social Investment Forum has a campaign
to encourage investors to devote at least one percent of their assets to
community investing, there could be a .5 percent or at least a very modest 1
percent campaign to support organizations working on systemic change. Even a
very small percentage of SRI assets devoted to improving our tax system could
make a big difference and build vital momentum. If nothing else, SRI money
managers and organizations could help spread the word, letting their clients
know we're facing problems larger than just where you put your money. That
doesn't suggest current SRI practices should be abandoned, only that they need
to be expanded and put in perspective.
A good place to begin a conceptual shift
is by reconsidering SRI's three-legged stool analogy.
Instead of a stool, we'd like to suggest that a more appropriate image is a
three-pronged fork. At this point, not all of the prongs are the same size or
strength. Shareholder activism and community investing could be larger, stronger
and sharper-allowing social investors to wield a tool that works more like a
pitchfork than a dinner utensil.
Using the imagery of a fork-shaped tool
helps us remember that to get results, ethical
investors must continue prodding away. It also helps keep the big issues in
mind: it's a reminder that aspects of the economy act like an untamed beast
that needs poking in the right direction. For those parts of the economy that
are effective and humane, the fork can be used to keep it properly fed. And last,
seeing SRI's current tactics not as a
container/support, but as a tool, helps remind us that we'll need other
equipment to do a big job.
It's time for the SRI community to ask
itself, "Are the vehicles we've used for the last three decades, such as screening,
still the best tools for making companies more responsible? Given the
sophistication SRI has gained over the years, and the clout it has, are there
more effective or supplemental ways to accomplish the goal of making
corporations accountable?"
The SRI business now has a good
opportunity. The one upside of the Enron and other corporate scandals is that
they've brought public awareness to a big problem. Combine that with the fact
that many SRI founders are still alive, still running companies, and still
looked to for leadership, and you can see the time is
ripe. It wouldn't take that many voices speaking in unison to bolster SRI's power. Social investors have accomplished a lot in
their 30-plus years. And, perhaps most important, they've laid the groundwork
for the possibility of fundamental, lasting economic change. It may be that
their most important work is yet to come.
MARSHALL GLICKMAN
is editor of Green Living, an environmental journal published from
Williamsville, VT and the author of The Mindful Money Guide (Ballantine).
MARJORIE KELLY
is co-founder and publisher of Minneapolis-based Business Ethics: Corporate
Responsibility Report (www.business-ethics.com), and author of The Divine Right
of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy (Berrett-Koehler
Publishers).