Analysing responsible investment practices: a tool for corporate social responsibility implementation using MCDM approach

Achieving social sustainability becomes a key debate after the introduction of sustainable development goals globally. However, the existing strategies like green manufacturing, and circular economy proposed for industries more focussed on economic and environment sustainability and have a little direct impact on social aspects. Considering the fact, studies started to correlate the impact of corporate social responsibility as one of the key strategies for achieving social sustainability goals. There are many existing studies exists with tools and strategies which effectively implement corporate social responsibility. Most of these studies stressed the importance of responsible investment for effective implementation of corporate social responsibility. This study seeks the opportunity to explore and understand the relationship among responsible investment practices which could drives the effective implementation of corporate social responsibility for achieving social sustainability goals. Totally 16 common responsible investment practices were considered in this study, which further analysed through DEMATEL-ANP with the assistance of case study methodology. The findings revealed that among 16 considered common practices, “investment on communications” (RP13) holds the top position followed by “Invest on socially responsible mutual funds and exchange traded funds” (RP12). Contrary to this, “providing micro finance to local startups within the mining ecosystem” (RP16) holds the least influence responsible investment practice, which is followed by investment on training and education of workers to understand their social rights (RP14). This study contributes to strengthen the theoretical discussions by including social aspects in company’s long term investment practices. The obtained results were used to provide key managerial implications including finding different strategies to enhance (RP13), which could further be considered by industrial managers for implementation of corporate social responsibility in their organization in effective way for long term goal achievement.