Fiduciary finance ≠ stakeholder management: a reply to Cadman's governance theory

This article deals with the question of the integration of climate-change concern in the investment industry. The article is motivated by the prevailing institutional approach to understanding organizational governance set out in Tim Cadman (2011) [Evaluating the governance of responsible investment institutions: an environmental and social perspective. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment 1, no. 1: 20--9]. A case is used to illustrate problems with the framework that has been put forward. The analytical approach draws on critical discourse and visual semiotics methods, and interview research. Attention is directed to the ways in which text and illustration, in combination, are read. Used for this purpose is material bearing on the involvement or otherwise of the funds management sector in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change policy regime. The examined material, it is argued, reinforces imagined levels of prosperity through business activity, while assuming away any need to downscale that activity. Maintenance of the policy regime is not the central issue here: what is at stake is human communities and ecological systems. The governance framework put forward by Cadman can be considered in that light.