The Basellandschaftliche Pensionskasse (BLPK) highlighted its positive attitude towards Socially Responsible Investment and intents to develop a sophisticated sustainability strategy in line with ethical, social and ecological criteria. Hence, the FHNW School of Business was selected as a research partner in order to gain insights concerning the elaboration of procedures for exercising the voting rights abroad, the use of benchmark indices and the active dialogue with businesses they are invested in.

The project is based on available data, personal communication and market information. Concerning the inclusion of company data, websites were checked for authenticity and only reliable providers were used. Annual reports and other similar reports were considered in the data analysis. For all secondary data, the defined inclusion and exclusion criteria were checked. Only those studies, websites and reports were selected which contributed to answering the research questions. For the collection of qualitative primary data, the approach of semi-structured interviews with open questions was pursued. With this strategy, we ensured to collect experiences and strategy elements unique to the interview partner.

The findings suggest that ESG refers to a managerial tool as the underlying challenge lies in the determination of negative externalities. The assessment of ESG instruments reveals the benefits of an integrated strategy with few key partners. Regarding the divergences of the product offers, the link between ratings and benchmarks, and the difficulty to maintain consistency across different data suppliers. Further, strategies and industrial experiences are intended to present tangible and established implementation paths for the BLPK.