Conference Programme

Investors and regulators are concerned that investment funds use the ESG-investing label to attract investment flows without making real ESG-oriented investments. Exploiting the launch of the SEC’s Climate and ESG Task Force (the Task Force hereafter), we investigate whether securities regulators’ oversight disciplines the funds to “walk the talk.” We show that ESG-labeled funds exhibit an improvement in fund-level ESG performance after the launch of the Task Force. Such changes are more pronounced among ESG funds located closer to the SEC and those whose prospectuses have a greater emphasis on ESG issues. Further analyses reveal that ESG funds claiming negative (positive) screening strategies are more likely to drop (initiate) investments in stocks as claimed in their prospectuses; those claiming ESG integration strategies reduce their investments in firms with negative ESG incidents; those claiming active ownership strategies are more likely to vote to support proposals advocating greater transparency in ESG issues. Collectively, our results suggest the effectiveness of regulatory oversight in disciplining ESG funds to “walk the ESG talk”.

Firms increasingly make strategic commitments to growth, sustainability, and competitive positioning in domains governed by infrastructure they do not fully control. We examine this tension in the context of AI-driven data center investment, where leading technology firms have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to expand computing capacity while pursuing net-zero targets. Using the November 2022 release of ChatGPT as a shock that heightened competitive urgency, we analyze where firms sited facilities across U.S. electricity grid regions. We find that firms facing greater expansion pressure from AI competition systematically built large-scale facilities in regions with larger existing generation capacity and greater fossil-fuel dependence, resulting in operations within more carbon-intensive electricity systems. This pattern does not reflect diminished sustainability commitments: firms maintained or expanded renewable energy procurement during the same period. Our findings suggest that when firms must expand faster than infrastructure systems can adapt, the environmental characteristics of available infrastructure increasingly shape realized outcomes.

This paper addresses the paradox that despite significant corporate investment in sustainability, ecosystems essential for business viability such as forests, water, and biodiversity continue to degrade. We examine how firms can regenerate natural common goods when property rights are fragmented or contested. We develop a conceptual typology of regenerative business models grounded in Sikor and Lestrelin (2017) revised property rights conceptual schema. By disaggregating use, control, and authoritative rights, we theorize how rights configurations condition firms’ business models and their capacity for value creation, capture, and distribution. The typology identifies seven ideal-type models ranging from firm-led regeneration to intermediary and governance-based roles, each linked to distinct value logics. The framework provides managers with a diagnostic tool to select viable regenerative strategies under different rights regimes, helping them align profitability with commons regeneration. We extend business model and sustainability scholarship by integrating locus of governance authority and degree of integration of property rights into theorizing about regeneration, offering actionable guidance for managers confronting this unsolved problem.