Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics |
Publisher | Springer Nature Switzerland |
Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2019 |
Abstract
Divestment is defined as the act of withdrawing investments from a company or industry for ethical or financial reasons. It can be described as a form of socially responsible investing (SRI) that applies nonfinancial (environmental and social) criteria as well as exclusionary screening to guide an investor’s financial decisions. While divestment has been most famously pursued against companies compliant in the racial conflicts and human rights violations of the South African apartheid era, the recent fossil fuel divestment movement has burgeoned the largest and fastest growing divestment campaign in history (Hunt et al. 2016).