What Is the Purpose of ESG? Who Should Decide?

Despite its explosive growth, there is considerable disagreement about the fundamental purpose of ESG. Two types of policies associated with ESG metrics and mechanisms give rise to at least two opposing views of their purpose: “profit–maximizing policies” versus “normative sustainable policies.” In this chapter, we advocate the second type of strategies, arguing that corporate leaders who embrace ESG should be open to adopting a purpose that may undermine or even intentionally sacrifice shareholder wealth. In defending this view, we consider the question of who has the legal, political, and moral authority to decide on ESG purpose. We argue that business leaders already retain a great deal of legal autonomy in deciding whether or not to adopt some version of an ESG purpose as part of the firm's overall purpose. We then discuss the challenges posed by what we call the Political Liberal Problem (PLP), which seems to suggest that corporate leaders should refrain from promoting a particular view of the good on behalf of their constituents or stakeholders. We contend that a normative sustainable view of ESG purpose depends crucially on the ability to defend the relatively autonomous moral judgment of business leaders in setting ESG strategy

The Ethics of ESG

This book contains a collection of chapters that critically assesses the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement. It addresses moral, political, and legal questions about the legitimacy of ESG as a management strategy and as an investment strategy. While the prevailing view of ESG limits the assessment of social and environmental challenges to financial criteria, the chapters here examine the possibility that ethical considerations require that nonfinancial issues must be considered too. Some chapters explicitly argue that ESG strategies should focus on creating real-life impacts on morally significant problems like climate change, protecting basic human rights, and combatting corporate corruption. Other chapters instead examine the possibility that the long-term feasibility of ESG limits its moral ambitions, requiring that ESG be regarded only as a set of devices for minimizing relevant risk in way that protects financial gain. An overarching theme of the book is that ethical interpretations of the ESG movement are needed and likely to drive future social, political and legal developments relevant to ESG

ESG, Ethics, Law, and Beyond

This book contains a collection of chapters that critically assesses the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement. It addresses moral, political, and legal questions about the legitimacy of ESG as a management strategy and as an investment strategy. While the prevailing view of ESG limits the assessment of social and environmental challenges to financial criteria, the chapters here examine the possibility that ethical considerations require that nonfinancial issues must be considered too. Some chapters explicitly argue that ESG strategies should focus on creating real-life impacts on morally significant problems like climate change, protecting basic human rights, and combatting corporate corruption. Other chapters instead examine the possibility that the long-term feasibility of ESG limits its moral ambitions, requiring that ESG be regarded only as a set of devices for minimizing relevant risk in way that protects financial gain. An overarching theme of the book is that ethical interpretations of the ESG movement are needed and likely to drive future social, political and legal developments relevant to ESG

Left governmental power and the reduction of inequalities in Western Europe (1871-2020)

Despite considerable attention in the literature, existing studies analyzing the effect of left governmental power on inequalities suffer from three main limitations: a privileged focus on economic forms of inequality at the expense of political and social ones, inaccurate measurements of left governmental power, and the analyses’ narrow time spans. This article addresses such concerns through a comparative longitudinal analysis where the impact of left governmental power on different measures of political, social, and economic inequalities is investigated in 20 Western European countries across the last 150 years. Data show that, consistent with previous literature, the Left in government has significantly reduced most forms of inequalities. However, the equalizing effect of the Left in government has decreased over time and has become not significant since the 1980s. The Left is today incapable of accomplishing its historical mission of reducing inequalities. The article discusses the rationale and implications of these findings

A Federalist Alternative for European Governance

How did the European Union (EU) deal with the crises of the 2010s and 2020s? These crises arose in policy realms that were the province of national governments, so the European Council was the driving institu- tion for managing them. National governments were able to take deci- sions, but their decisions were contradictory and unaccountable, and regularly hindered by divisions between them. In order to manage a pol- icymaking process dominated by the claims of national and sub-regional governments, Sergio Fabbrini argues that intergovernmental governance has had to transform the EU into an international organization. Fabbrini shows that differentiated integration would further distance the EU from the project of an ‘ever closer union’ and, on the basis of a comparative federalism approach, he proposes an alternative paradigm of a multi-tier Europe with a federalist core to balance national sovereignties and supra- national authority

Navigating Stakeholder Orientation in Family Firms: A Comprehensive Study

Family Firm Stakeholder Orientation: A Review and Research Agenda. Unveiling the mechanism of stakeholder orientation in family firms. Job-Seekers' Perceptions of Stakeholder Orientation in Family Firms

Sequestro di dispositivi informatici: imposizioni tecnologiche e scelte interpretative. Alla ricerca di un recupero della legalità probatoria.

Il rapporto tra tecnologia e diritto è tra i più complessi e bisogna evitare che le esigenze della prima prevalgano sulle regole imposte dal secondo. Quando ciò accade si assiste ad un'inversione del metodo interpretativo che conduce ad espansionismi esegetici del formante giurisprudenziale; espansionismi particolarmente pericolosi nella misura in cui attingono mezzi di ricerca della prova assoggettati ad una riserva di legge e che, inoltre, incidono su diritti individuali costituzionalmente presidiati. Di qui l'esigenza di una rigorosa osservanza della legalità probatoria come emergente dalle fonti interne e sovranazionali.The link between technology and law is among the most complex and it’s necessary to avoid that the needs of the first prevail on the rules imposed by the second. When it happens there is a reversal of the interpretative method that leads the jurisprudence to exegetical expansionism; these are particularly dangerous expansionisms since they refer to means of searching for evidence which are subject to the principle of legality and that, also, affect individual rights constitutionally protected. Here the need for a rigorous observance of the principle of legality as emerging from internal and supranational sources

Bodies politic: Burial and reburial in fascist Italy

This article examines the ‘necro-politics' or the fascist politics of death as it unfolded from the funerals of the squadristi - the members of the fascist paramilitary squads who carried out attacks and violence throughout Italy before Benito Mussolini came to power in the autumn of 1922 - to their exhumation and reburial in ‘shrines’ during the 1930s. Adopting an anthropological perspective, it considers the funerals, exhumations and reburials of fascists as rites of passage that dynamically came to shape political meanings. As the article will show, while the funerals of the early 1920s became crucial vehicles for the revolutionary mobilization that brought fascism to power, the reburials from the early 1930s served to normalize the politics of the squadristi and obliterate the dangerously disruptive repercussions of their revolutionary origins. At the conceptual level, the article foregrounds the dynamic and shifting relationship between power and ritual that shaped fascist political culture

La proprietà intellettuale nell'era dell'intelligenza artificiale

L’intelligenza artificiale (AI) ha raggiunto in modo tentacolare qualunque disciplina giuridica. Non è certamente da meno il diritto della proprietà intellettuale in quanto insieme di istituti per antonomasia consacrati alla promozione e alla tutela della creatività e dell’innovazione – in parte riferibile agli sforzi umani, in parte a quelli imprenditoriali –, nelle sue prismatiche sfaccettature. Di qui l’urgenza di interrogarsi sulla tenuta del quadro normativo vigente, mettendo a confronto le soluzioni percorribili de iure condito rispetto a quelle prospettabili de iure condendo. Il volume si apre con la disamina delle liaisons dangereuses tra diritto d’autore e AI, sia generativa che non generativa, e in particolare di come la progressiva deumanizzazione dei processi creativi e ispettivi stia ridefinendo i contorni tra l’autore, la sua opera e le forme di utilizzo della medesima consentite. Simili interrogativi riguardano poi il diritto dei brevetti. Invero, l’AI diventa strumento di ausilio e di valutazione dell’inventività, oltre ad essere essa stessa potenzialmente eleggibile per la privativa brevettuale. La controversa “spiegabilità” degli algoritmi di AI pone inoltre un riflettore sulla ricerca di uno standard di trasparenza condiviso nell’ambito delle invenzioni cd. AI-aided al fine di mantenere un rapporto bilanciato tra la tutela brevettuale e l’alternativa del segreto commerciale. Si prosegue nella messa a fuoco del rapporto tra marchi e AI, evidenziando i vantaggi connessi all’assistenza computazionale nella fase costitutiva del diritto senza al contempo trascurare le criticità riscontrabili, inter alia, nell’impiego degli algoritmi di machine learning per le attività di keyword advertising e per l’accertamento automatizzato del rischio confusorio. La quarta e ultima parte compie una ricostruzione di come questa tecnologia rivoluzionaria possa essere adoperata nell’ambito dei disegni e modelli, a partire dal contributo nella progettazione, integrale o parziale, di nuovi aspetti esteriori di un prodotto sino all’intercettazione degli usi potenzialmente lesivi del disegno nei meandri sterminati degli ecosistemi digitali. Questo lavoro ambisce quindi ad esplorare le opportunità e le sfide con cui devono confrontarsi gli istituti del diritto della proprietà intellettuale maggiormente interessati dall’impatto dirompente dell’AI, offrendo una fotografia che distingue i punti fermi da quelli suscettibili di evoluzione, in un mondo dove i risultati intellettuali e le rispettive forme di creazione, sfruttamento e controllo costituiscono il frutto di apporti umani ed algoritmici sempre più intrecciati