Background: Reinforcing gender stereotypes still occurs in toy advertisements even though it is stated that gender stereotyping in marketing is a public concern. Parents perception of gender stereotyping will further influence how children act according to gender, which is why it is of importance to explore how parents perceive gender stereotyped advertising towards their children and how this is linked to socially responsible marketing. Research questions: RQ: What are the perceptions of Swedish parents on gender stereotypes in advertisements targeted at children, and how can this be linked to socially responsible marketing? SQ1: What are the perceptions of parents on advertisements towards children where stereotyped gender roles are being reinforced? SQ2: What are the perceptions of parents on advertisements towards children where stereotyped gender roles are being challenged? Purpose: The purpose of this research is to link the idea of socially responsible marketing with gender stereotyping and advertising targeting children. Methodology: Using visual materials as stimuli in semi-structured focused interviews. Conclusion: The empirical investigation revealed that parents perceived gender stereotypes in advertising as harmful to society, particularly to children. Socially responsible marketing should therefore reflect more on this subject and portray both girls and boys sharing colors, attributes and toys.

In this thesis, the regime dependent mean and abnormal returns are studied to examine whether socially responsible mutual funds have a different performance from traditional mutual funds, since there may be different patterns in the economy. Five economic factors - stock returns, treasury yield spread, credit spread, economic confidence and building permits - are used to identify the market regimes, which are determined as bear and bull markets. The regime-dependent abnormal returns are calculated with a regime-switching Fama & French three factor asset-pricing model. The empirical results show that socially responsible mutual funds have statistically higher mean return than non-socially responsible mutual funds in both bear and bull markets. However, using the measurement of the abnormal returns, socially responsible mutual funds statistically underperform non-socially responsible mutual funds in bull market, while the performance of the two types of funds are not statistically differentiable in the bear market.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a new topic in finance which can be viewed from two different perspectives: that of the business (CSR), and that of the individual investor (Socially Responsible Investing, SRI). The evidence from this study suggested that in the short-term, there were no significant price effects on the SRI stocks around the announcement dates of the SRI constituent lists. In contrast, the returns of SRI portfolios over the sample period seemed to be superior to those of conventional firms. The regression analysis found that generally the SRI coefficients were insignificant; however using one of the models during the fifteen year period, it was found that SRI constituents attained a ROE that was 11.18% higher than conventional peers as well as a ROA that was 1.824% lower than conventional firms. When the period was restricted to 2004-2009 it was found that social performance was positively (and sometimes significantly) correlated with ROE.

A company can create a socially responsible image by having the public associate it (the company) with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Many researchers have asserted that a socially responsible image benefits a company in many ways. Zenisek (1979) clarified the complexity of CSR by approaching the concept through an organizational behavior approach. He constructed a CSR model that consisted of critical aspects—the ideological, operational, and societal aspects–in the relationship between a company and society. By applying Zenisek’s (1979) CSR model, this study conducts a content analysis of the corporate website homepages of Fortune Global 500 companies. The objective is to explore the variability in creating a socially responsible image through CSR communication by revenue, industry category, and country-of-origin. The results indicate that there are differences in communicating CSR aspects of CSR as well as CSR issues according to a company’s revenue, industry category, and country-of-origin. The study provides fresh insights for practitioners to approach CSR communication in business. / text

A growing concern among investors for social responsibility in relation to the business world and its effect on the environment, society, and government has increased and therefore different types of stock indices and funds that incorporate socially responsible ideals have been developed. However, a literature review revealed that there does not seem to be much information about the volatility of Green Funds or Socially Responsible Investments (SRI). Volatility is an important part of understanding the financial markets and is used by many to understand asset allocation, risk management, option pricing and many other functions. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the volatility performance of SRIs, REFs and Conventional Indices by using different models CAPM, SR, JA and EGARCH, and monthly and daily data from the US, UK, Japan and Eurozone financial markets to compare results.   This thesis has been conducted by following an objective ontological and positivist epistemological position, because the data used for analysis in this thesis is independent from the author and has studied what actually exists, not what the author seeks to interpret. The research approach is functionalist, because this thesis sought to explain how the investments function in relation to volatility comparisons in different financial markets and if this volatility can be predicted through a framework of rules designed by previous researchers. The design is a deductive study of quantitative, longitudinal, secondary data, because hypotheses are derived from theory to test the volatility of time series data between the year 2007 and 2012 through empirical evidence.   Statistical evidence was found to suggest that the EGARCH model for volatility measurement is the best fit to model volatility and daily data can give more information and better consistency between results. SRIs were found to be less volatile than CIs in all financial markets; REFs were found more volatile than CIs in the US and Eurozone markets but not in the UK and Japan markets; REFs were found to be more volatile than SRIs in all markets except the UK; REFs were also found to be more volatile than SRIs and CIs during a recession in all markets except the UK. Evidence also indicated that the correlations between REFs and SRIs in the US and Eurozone were significant, but not significant in the UK and Japan market samples. The correlations were low between the UK and Japan SRIs, Japan and Eurozone SRIs and Japan SRI and Eurozone REF, which suggest that an investor may consider to diversify between these investments. However, all other statistically significant correlations between financial markets were high and could consequentially deliver poor long term investment performance.

The study critically reviews the application of the Sharia investment screening process, from both Sharia and practical perspectives. In practice, there appears to be inconsistencies in the Sharia investment screening criteria among Islamic investment institutions, especially in terms of the tolerance level, as well as the changing of the Sharia rules. This certainly affects the confidence in the Sharia screening criteria standards, which might adversely affect the Islamic mutual funds industry. The non-income generating aspects, such as social and environmental concerns, are not incorporated in the contemporary Islamic investment screening process. This seems to be rather paradoxical, since it contradicts the Sharia-embedded ethical values of fairness, justice and equity. The thesis contends that external audits regarding the implementation of Sharia rules should be adopted to ensure the compliance of the investment with Sharia guidelines. Furthermore, it is desirable for Sharia boards to adopt corporate governance practice and take proactive roles, especially in Muslim countries, in order to influence companies to adopt Sharia-compliant investment practices. The tolerance levels of conventional finance activities of companies in Muslim countries should be re-evaluated and lowered in the Islamic investment screening criteria. This is partly due to the popularity and wide availability of Islamic banking and alternative Sharia instruments to interest-based finance, coupled with the fact that Muslim shareholders form the majority and hence, can vote to influence companies to adopt Sharia-compliant financing modes. In addition, the study provides empirical evidence that the Sharia screening process does not seem to have an adverse impact on either the absolute or the risk-adjusted performance of Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia, compared to their conventional counterpart equity mutual funds and also compared to their market benchmarks. This is regardless of the geographical investment focus subgroup examined and the market benchmark used (whether Islamic or conventional). Furthermore, the systematic risk analysis shows that in most cases Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia tend to be significantly less exposed to market risk compared to their conventional counterpart equity mutual funds, and compared to their conventional market benchmarks. Thus, the assumption that Sharia investment constraints lead to inferior performance and riskier investment portfolios because of the relatively limited investment universe seems to be rejected. This implies that Muslim investors in Saudi Arabia can choose Islamic investments that are consistent with their beliefs without being forced to either sacrifice performance or expose themselves to higher risk. The investment style analysis also shows that the Sharia screening process does not seem to influence Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia towards small or growth companies compared to their conventional counterparts of similar geographical investment focus. Moreover, the study provides empirical evidence that the performance difference between Islamic and conventional socially responsible indices is insignificant despite applying different sets of screening criteria. However, Islamic indices tend to be associated with relatively lower systematic risk compared to their conventional socially responsible counterparts. Therefore, Islamic investment portfolios can be marketed to socially responsible investors who share similar beliefs in terms of excluding certain industries such as tobacco, alcohol, pornography, defense, etc., in spite of no financial filters being used by conventional socially responsible investors. This finding is especially appealing in Muslim countries where there are usually no mutual funds categorized as socially responsible, but rather Islamic. Moreover, the study also provides empirical evidence that incorporating conventional sustainability criteria into the traditional Sharia screening process does not lead to inferior performance or higher exposure to systematic risk. The results indicate that regardless of the restriction used - whether Islamic, socially responsible or Islamic socially responsible - restricted investment portfolios do not seem to be associated with inferior performance or higher exposure to risk. This finding opens the door for Sharia scholars and Muslim investors to reconsider broader social and environmental aspects as part of the Sharia investment screening process. With regards to investment style, Islamic and Islamic socially responsible indices seem to be skewed towards growth cap as compared to their conventional and conventional socially responsible indices, while Islamic socially responsible also leans towards a large cap. This implies that despite the performance similarity between, Islamic, conventional and conventional socially responsible indices, the returns driver of each type of investment tends to be different.

Identifying factors that affect the flow of mutual fund capital and betweenmutualfund types hasthe potential, among others,to relief fund management and investors from unnecessary administrative costs. This study investigated the role media reported weather shocks have on socially responsible and conventional mutual trust funds’capital flow.The study also has compared the magnitude of influence media reported weather shocks has on capital flow between socially responsible-and convectional mutualtrustfunds.It gives conclusionafter empirically studying all accessible socially responsible mutual trust fundswith relevant accessible financial data, originated, and actively traded in the Swedish financial market with the Swedish currency (Kronor) as well as taking conventional mutual trustfundswith similar maturity. And, the study result shows that media reported weather shocks has statistically significant role in the flow of capital, on bothsocially responsible-and conventional mutual funds in Sweden. It also shows that there is no significant difference in the role media reported weather shocks play between the two fundtypes. The result is concurrent with Hirshleifer & Shumway (2003)’s study which indicate that weather affecting investors mood and behavior. The result is interesting as it implicates to the psychological and emotional factorsplaying a significant role in affecting the flow of investment capital in general, in contrast to the rational economic behavior characterized by fund return and risk performance.

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