Impact Investing for the common good

Abstract

The global economic crisis that shocked the world in 2007/2008 revealed how far reaching the impact of economic and financial markets are on the lives of people and the environment. In the aftermath of the crisis, the world started questioning the economic models that had dominated it for the past decades. The topic of ethics entered into the financial world as one of the reasons for the onset of the crisis. Impact investing emerged as a possible answer in that it adds to the risk-return trade off, the intentional pursuit and measurement of a social and/or environmental outcome. The dual primacy of profit and purposes challenges the vision of the human person which is present in today’s mainstream economics. If Impact investing is to succeed, it needs to be anchored in the Catholic vision of the human person with an orientation towards the integral development of the human being. This cannot be achieved using the total good concept on which the capitalist market economy is constructed which is the sum total of all the individual goods. The human person is a relational being who is on a journey of growth. This journey together with others is an intrinsic good which is the common good which, in turn, is the basis for the civil market economy. The impact investing ecosystem is to be constructed on the logic of gift and gratuitousness whereby the human person can be a gift to self, to others, and care for the environment with an overarching orientation towards the common good. This in turn would lay the common ground through which profit and gift are reconciled, and provides the right platform for market, state and civil society to collaborate for a more humane world and towards being more authentic human beings.