Foster Business Library


Socially Responsible Investing



Foster Business Library research guides are aimed at University of Washington students, faculty, and staff, highlighting resources available to them; users not currently affiliated with the university may be unable to access some of these resources.
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Foster Business Library Databases:

The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

  • EconLit:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under Databases — Journals, News and Magazines. Produced by the American Economic Association, EconLit is the fundamental research tool in economics. The database provides bibliographic citations, with selected abstracts, to the international literature on economics since 1969. Econ Lit corresponds to the Journal of Economic Literature and the Index of Economic Articles, covering journal articles, books, and dissertations, as well as articles in collective works, such as conference proceedings and collected essay volumes.

    A Quick Search in this database for Socially Responsible Investing produced just eleven references and eighteen websites.

  • JSTOR:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under List of All Business Databases. JSTOR is a subject searchable index of 360 journals, with full-text backfiles of scholarly journals, some of which date back to the 1800's. Among the collections of scholarly journals on this site are ones for Business and for Economics, encompassing over one hundred journals.

    A search in this database for Socially Responsible Investing produced over 1,900 references.

  • Social Sciences Citation Index:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under Databases — Journals, News and Magazines. This database "is a multidisciplinary index, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. It "provides access to current information and retrospective data from 1956 forward."

    A search in this database for Socially Responsible Investing produced over two dozen references.

    Web Resources:

    Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. When using web resources, be sure to evaluate the credibility of these resources. For a subject index to web resources, see Business Resources on the Web on the Foster Business Library homepage.

  • Co-op America:   "Co-op America is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1982. Our mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society." See their resources on Social Investing.

  • EIRIS (Ethical Investment Research Services):   "The EIRIS Foundation is a charity set up in 1983 with the help of a group of churches and charities that wanted to apply their principles to their investments. They needed a research organisation to help them put their principles into practice when making investment decisions. Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS) Ltd, a subsidiary company of EIRIS, undertakes most of the research for clients and provides commercial services." See their History of Ethical Investment and Market Statistics, under the Key Facts & Statistics tab. See also their Publications tab.

  • European Social Investment Forum:   "Eurosif, European Social Investment Forum, was created in 2001 to serve as an umbrella association to cover socially responsible investment issues at the European level. Eurosif members are made up of the national social investment forums in Europe (SIFs) who govern Eurosif." See their Publications and resources on SRI.

  • Fast Company Sensible Investing:   Fast Company magazine proposes a new way of looking at the human side of investing, at profit as well as human impact. See their list of over twenty companies that "drive profits through human impact," with related articles and a company scoring form.

  • KLD Research & Analytics:   "KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. is the leading authority on social research and indexes for institutional investors. Since 1988, institutional investors, managers, trustees, consultants and advisors have depended on the quality and expertise of KLD.  Today, 33 of the top 50 institutional money managers worldwide use KLD’s research to integrate environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decisions." This firm also offers a research database, SOCRATES, that some libraries offer (but not the Foster Business Library). See their SRI Resources and social responsibility Indexes.

  • Principles for Responsible Investment:   "Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) is an initiative led by the United Nations for investment professionals." For an excellent introduction to PRI, see this website from the University of Western Ontario's Business Library, on Principles for Responsible Investment.

  • Social Funds:   "SocialFunds.com is a website of SRI World Group, Inc., a news, research, and consulting firm that advises clients regarding sustainability investment issues and corporate responsibility practices." This website boasts it offers "10,000 pages of information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news." See their Media Center.

  • Socially Responsible Investing Mutual Fund Screen:   This screener is offered by the company Invested Interests, "experienced investment advisors and web developers that believe socially responsible investing is an important movement." They describe themselves as the "#1 online socially responsible investment advisor." See their Social Investing Tools & Research. See also their Introduction to Socially Responsible Investing.

  • Social Investment Forum:   This Washington, D.C.-based organization is "a national nonprofit membership organization, promoting the concept, practice and growth of socially responsible investing." See their Research Reports.

  • UK Social Investment Forum:   "The Forum was launched in 1991 to bring together the different strands of SRI nationally and to act as a focus and a voice for the industry. UKSIF’s 250+ members and affiliates include retail and institutional fund managers, financial advisers, SRI research providers, consultants, trade unions, banks, building societies, community development finance institutions, NGOs and individuals interested in SRI." See the SRI column of resources on their Site Map.

  • Wikipedia:   This free online user-created and maintained encyclopedia can be a good starting point for an orientation to a topic. See their Socially Responsible Investing.

    Foster Business Library Books:

    The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of over 70,000 books on all business topics. To search for materials on all three campuses of the University of Washington, go to the UW Libraries Catalog, in the upper left corner of the Foster Business Library homepage. Search by keyword, title, author, series, etc.

    To limit the results of your search just to materials in the Foster Business Library collection, use the Modify or Limit options at the top of the search results and change the library location to Foster Business Library. Availablity is indicated on the right of each online catalog record. First, note in which collection, within Foster, your materials are in, since the library has ten different Collections, each in a different location and often with differing arrangements. "Available" indicates that the book should be on the shelves under that call number and available for you to check out. "Due" and a date indicates that the book is already checked out to someone and is due back on the date indicated; you can have the "Request/Place Hold" feature to recall the book for your use.

    If the material you want is not in the collections of the University of Washington, you can use the "Search Summit" feature to repeat your search in the combined holdings of over thirty cooperating libraries in Washington and Oregon. Use the "Request This Item" feature in Summit to have books in those library sent here to Foster for you to check out.

    The Foster general stacks collection is located south of the main part of the Foster Business Library, through the two pass-throughs into the basement of Balmer. The arrangement is by call number, from A (at the east end, near the Copy Center) to Z (at the far west end).

    A keyword search for Socially Responsible Investing produced just six records in the UW Libraries, with just two records in the Foster Business Library. A search for the subject Investments -- Social Aspects retrieved just eleven records in the UW Libraries, with just three records in the Foster Business Libraries' collections.

    UW Libraries' titles from these searches include:

    Foster Business Library Articles:

    Articles in academic journals, magazines, trade periodicals, and newspapers are one of the best sources for any kind of research. While the Foster Business Library offers a large periodicals print collection, comprising over 800 titles, articles are most easily accessed online, 24/7, in such fulltext article databases as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases are available in the library or from off-campus, and provide access to over 10,000 periodicals and millions of articles.

    Library access to most ProQuest databases will terminate at the end of spring quarter 2008, except for ProQuest NewsStand, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Historical New York Times, and the Historical Wall Street Journal. For more about this change, see UW Libraries Providing New Databases. After this change, comprehensive article searches should be performed in EBSCO Business Source Premier, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest NewsStand. Also, after this change, links to the articles below will be broken.

    ProQuest Databases:

    This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.

    Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article.

    A search for the phrase "Socially Responsible Investing" produced over 1,300 articles, including fifty articles in scholarly journals, over eighty magazine articles, over two hundred articles in trade and industry periodicals, and over six hundred newspaper articles.

    A subject search for SUB(Social Investing) also produced over 1,300 articles, including over 170 articles in scholarly journals, over 180 magazine articles, over seven hundred articles in trade and industry periodicals, and over three hundred newspaper articles.

    Examples of articles, from the searches above, include:

    Help:


    11 January 2007; updated 29 May 2008.   Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu