Educational courses

Education and training opportunities are needed for any long-term endeavour, including the advancement of social investment. Much of the rationale behind the conferences and seminars is to provide this kind of knowledge improvement. Though there are often opportunities to upgrade one's knowledge through occasional forums such as these, there does not seem to be much in the way of formal education venues. Courses that are offered generally tend to include SRI as part of larger topics.

Boston College in Massachusetts offers a good example. Graduate courses in the Department of Sociology there provide material relevant to social investing. The professors who teach them include Severyn Bruyn, who wrote The field of social investment, and Ritchie Lowry, author of GOOD MONEY: A Guide to Profitable Social Investing in the '90s. Lowry is also the prime mover behind the Good Money Journal, and On-Line Guide, an extensive SRI information resource.

The courses include:

"Business and Society - Severyn Bruyn

... we examine the changing role of business and society, including issues in corporate governance, professional ethics, worker self-management, and the social development of work systems in American enterprise. We will review current trends in corporate accountability, such as equal employment opportunity, occupational safety and health, government deregulation of industry an social self-regulation, environmental and consumer protection, ethical investing, community development corporations, and the changing character of multinational corporations.

Corporate Social Responsibility - Ritchie Lowry

Contemporary capitalism is in a crisis because of the general lack of social responsiveness on the part of corporate executives, shareholders, investors, and other economic stakeholders. In response, movements have arisen in recent decades to respond to this crisis including socially responsive investing, shareholder and consumer action, and corporate social responsibility. This seminar, through shared readings and discussions, will consider the ways in which these movements are responding to the crisis in capitalism. We will consider alternative and more productive forms of economic and business conduct."



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Last update of this page May 8, 1998