Sustainability with Substance

Deciphering the human factor

How to turn culture and inclusion insights into alpha signals

Sep 26, 2023

23 minutes

Stephanie Niven

Investment analysts frequently ignore culture and inclusion, focusing exclusively on companies’ financial statements. Yet the ‘human factor’ is often among the key drivers of corporate performance, and ultimately of shareholder returns. Professor Alex Edmans talks with Ninety One’s Stephanie Niven and Miles Hamilton about how to leverage research into culture and inclusion into better investment decisions. They also discuss their joint work to develop a practical framework for incorporating culture insights into investment analysis.


Useful reading:

  • Human capital
    Exploring Ninety One’s framework for analysing the externalities generated by businesses that impact employees, drawing heavily on our methodology for evaluating corporate cultures.
    Read more
  • Sustainability disruption: capitalising on externalities
    Introducing the Capitals Framework, a Ninety One methodology for assessing investments across multiple dimensions of sustainability – including natural capital, social capital and human capital.
    Read more
  • Culture as a driver of sustainable alpha
    Using insight into workplace practices to identify investments with long-term potential.
    Download PDF

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Authored by

Stephanie Niven
Portfolio Manager

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