Les fonds mutuels éthiques américains: la présence de croyances organisationnelles au coeur de la performance sociale et financière.

Abstract

There are many ways to classify ethical mutual funds. One of them is to focus on the kinds of organizational beliefs we could identify in such funds. There are ethical mutual funds in which we could find out financial-oriented beliefs that try to explain or justify the choices made by the fund managers. Some other ethical mutual funds are rather characterized by their social-oriented beliefs that justily their social criteria. In some cases, ethical mutual funds have both kinds of beliefs. We have analyzed here three ethical mutual funds (Parnassus Equity Income Fund, Calvert Social Investment Fund Equity Portfolio", "Domini Social Equity Fund") in order to see if ethical mutual funds having financial-oriented and/or social-oriented beliefs would have a better financial performance than the S & P 500. We have found that the fund that has the better financial performance in comparison with the S & P 500 was the financial-oriented ethical mutual fund. The two other funds having socialoriented beliefs have a lower financial performance in comparison with the S & P 500.