Purpose-driven finance: The Manual

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Tuesday 3rd September - 14:00-18:00

Classroom 1, Saïd Business School - Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HP, UK

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After years of research on sustainable finance in its many forms, the field has taken shape and there are several established research community rethinking a purpose-driven finance. We feel it is time to bring that research together to create a resource for education purposes. In our conferences and debates around rethinking finance for sustainability, we are confronted with the predominance of a few, mainstream finance manuals providing the basis for financial education, with little or no room for critical thinking and alternative views on finance. As a result the finance curriculum has burrowed ever further down a single rabbit hole. We therefore need a book which exposes people to other approaches, (historical and institutional), if we are to build a system which delivers its proper purpose, both ESG and financial. 

We aim to update the existing finance curriculum in the light of recent developments toward sustainable financial markets, proposing purpose-driven finance theories in addition to the neo-classical theory, and innovative teaching methods. With this project, we aim to launch a new introductory finance curriculum, and provide an interactive ebook based course as a tool for anyone interested in learning or teaching finance. We wish to create this material collaboratively, using input from academics, practitioners, policy makers, and students. The resulting resources will be disseminated via the internet, making them free to use by participating institutions.

Towards that end, this workshop is convened as a side event of GRASFI, where all of these actors meet to take stock of latest developments in research on sustainable finance and investment. We propose an afternoon of collaboration to build a resource that will nurture the growth and development of graduate students worldwide studying finance and investment. This side-event will provide an opportunity for practitioners and researchers to build the content of the resource, and for authors to start developing their chapters.