Comparing socially responsible

and sustainable commercial

property investment
Philip Kimmet
School of Urban Development, QUT, Brisbane, Australia
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to set out to explore the similarities and differences between
jargon used to describe future-focussed commercial building product. This is not so much an exercise
in semantics as an attempt to demonstrate that responses to challenges facing the construction and
property sectors may have more to do with language than is generally appreciated.
Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual analysis which draws upon relevant
literature.
Findings Social responsibility and sustainability are often held to be much the same thing, with
each term presupposing the existence of the other. Clearly, however, there are incidences where
sustainable commercial property investment (SCPI) may not be particularly socially responsible,
despite being understood as an environmentally friendly initiative. By contrast, socially responsible
assets, at least in theory, should always be more sustainable than mainstream non-ethically based
investment. Put simply, the expression of social responsibility in the built environment may evoke,
and thereby deliver, a more sustainable product, as dened by wider socially inclusive parameters.
Practical implications The ndings show that promoting an ethic of social responsibility may
well result in more SCPI. Thus, the further articulation and celebration of social responsibility concepts
may well help to further advance a sustainable property investment agenda, which is arguably more
concerned about demonstrability of efciency than wider public good outcomes.
Originality/value The idea that jargon affects outcomes is not new. However, this idea has rarely,
if ever, been applied to the distinctions between social responsibility and sustainability. Even a
moderate re-emphasis on social responsibility in preference to sustainability may well provide
signicant future benets with respect to the investment, building and refurbishment of commercial
property.
Keywords Social responsibility, Property, Investments, Sustainable development, Ethics
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
The role of social responsibility in real estate investment has been poorly articulated in
comparison to the more general notion of ethical investment, often referred to as
socially responsible investment (SRI). It is possible to generalise though by declaring
that it often promotes environmental stewardship, consumer protection, equity and
access and basic human rights. These commonalities however remain unspecied and
under-analysed. By contrast, sustainability and its accomplice, sustainable
development, has if anything been over-used and exhaustively dened (Parkin,
2000), both in general applications (Dresner, 2002) and within the built environment
context specically (Doughty and Hammond, 2004; Lutzkendorf and Lorenz, 2007;
Montiel, 2008). Rather than add clarity, this has caused the term to be used loosely to
describe anything that has some sort of a future (Hopwood et al., 2005). In other words,
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Journal of Property Investment &
Finance
Vol. 27 No. 5, 2009
pp. 470-480
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1463-578X
DOI 10.1108/14635780910982340
something about the entity being described can be sustained for some time. Moreover,
if a property asset is said to be sustainable, this is more often than not interpreted to
mean that it incorporates some technical innovations which allow building users to
operate more efciently (Smith et al., 2007). In short then, sustainability tends to be
most commonly dened along physical and economic lines, and in eco-economic
terms in particular, based on the accepted truism that less waste and greater energy
efciency is good for the environment.
Claims of efciency in a marketing spiel are easy to make. In an attempt by
environmentally minded built environment interests to sort out the substance from the
greenwash, a range of codied schemes aiming at increasing building efciency such
as Green Star, Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method
and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design have been introduced over the
last decade or so that are designed to measure and grade sustainability. And clearly,
in a context where most of us want to be seen to be at least a little green, the measuring
and reporting of sustainability in the commercial property sector is arguably
increasingly inuencing design and investment patterns (Kimmet, 2008). It also may be
the case that such emerging trends are actually impacting on what real estate is
ultimately worth in the marketplace, proving that building green may not only be
pro-efciency, but it could also be protable, particular in the longer term (Sayce et al.,
2004). The problem is that sustainability efforts are now geared towards high
achievement of grades, and seldom specically address or reect sustainable
development as initially dened. Paradoxically it seems, as more competing denitions
of sustainability emerge, the more narrow applied sustainability practices appear to
become.
The benets of sustainable commercial property investment (SCPI), in both existing
and new products, get measured in micro (energy efciency, recycling, etc.) and macro
terms (greenhouse gas reducing, carbon footprinting, less resource depleting, etc.), but
are nearly always environmentally based. The social aspects of sustainability
(productivity, well-being, etc.) have proven harder to measure, and are clearly less
visible, however studies of Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics social
responsibility metrics have found that transparency is signicantly increased
(Chatterji et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the measuring, valuing and reporting of social
sustainability, or what is sometimes lumped into the notion of social responsibility, is
signicantly less developed, at least in the context of the built environment. This
makes it vitally important to demonstrate that social sustainability is identiable,
desirable and value adding, if it is going to really matter to real estate investment
proles any time soon. Successfully arguing that SRI not only fully envelopes
sustainable investment, but also actually seeks to further advance and expand upon a
sustainability agenda weighed down by the baggage of loosely applied jargon, may
well be an important catalyst in the evolution of a greener built environment.
As Hopwood et al. (2005, p. 38) argue a greener urban environment requires a strong
basis in principles that link the social and environmental to human equity.
Social sustainability tends to be viewed as the softer politically correct
component of sustainable development (Kimmet, 2007, pp. 39-40). This is a poor, yet
widely held misconception of the very tangible benets social sustainability can bring
to real estate investment (Boyle, 2005). Much greater clarity of the inuence of social
sustainability, in what is all too often a short-term focus on quick returns, is urgently
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required. More precise measurement and reporting of social sustainability will greatly
advance this understanding of its importance and will help to progress the arguably
marginalised second component of the Brundtland denition of sustainability the
rights of future generations to enjoy equal opportunities to those of the current global
citizens.
The structure of this paper is as follows: the rst section tackles the question of
what socially responsible commercial property investment (SRCPI) actually is. It is
argued that it is about socially progressive objectives, understood in the widest
possible terms, and delivered in the context of built commercial form. The second
section focuses on drawing distinctions between SCPI and SRCPI, citing the
Greenhouse Guarantee as an example of the latter, and arguing that such strategies are
a welcome template for greener investment. Finally, conclusions and implications
concerning the disparities between the terms and their usage are discussed, and a call
is made to industry and scholars to embrace social responsibility as the mantra
guiding future-focussed, equity-minded property investment.
Social responsibility
Social responsibility emerges from ideas about good corporate citizenship and ethical
practice, particularly with respect to economic equity. When used in conjunction with
triple bottom line frameworks, the term implies that humans matter at least as much as
economics and the environment. However, it is more commonly associated with
investment and corporate strategies and practices than the built environment.
SRI implies that investment decisions line up with an individuals personal values
regarding society and the environment (Watmore and Bradley, 2001; Newell and
Acheampong, 2002, p. 2). Kimmet (2003, p. 2) takes this thinking further by positioning
accountability as central to the notion, and not just the corporate adoption of privately
held values, stating that genuine social responsibility upholds the principles of social
justice predicated on a progressive understanding of egalitarianism and equal worth,
and the idea that those who have suffered most from power concentrations of the past
should benet most from its redistribution.
Edgerton (2007) and his colleagues see no difference between sustainability and
corporate social responsibility (CSR). This reects the language used in documents
discussing the Sustainable Responsible Investment Certication program run by the
Ethical Investment Association, which consciously merges the two concepts by using
each term interchangeably. However, Edgerton is quick to point out that some
investors do distinguish between the terms for measurement and reporting purposes.
Edgerton (2007) cites AMP Capitals Sustainable Alpha team as an example,
explaining that they see CSR as:
A bottom-up evaluation of how each rated company balances the needs of different
stakeholders in its business. This encompasses an assessment of how a rm fulls its
nancial and legal responsibilities to its stakeholders in the market place (e.g. shareholders,
suppliers and customers), as well as how it manages its workplace and environmental supply
chain issues, and its reputation in the communities in which it operates.
By distinction, the AMP team view industry sustainability (IS) as:
[. . .] a macro-level framework for assessing broader social, economic and technological trends
that are deemed likely to have a tangible impact on a companys future strategic and nancial
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position. As its starting point, IS recognises that there are long-term global pressures on
industries to adopt practices and sustain growth rates that do not substantially detract from
the living standards of future generations.
According to the social investment forum web site, socially responsible property
investment refers to the consideration of the social and environmental consequences
of investments, both positive and negative, within the context of rigorous nancial
analysis. Pivo (2005, p. 16) adds that it focuses on the triple bottom line by which
investments are evaluated in terms of their nancial protability, social equity, and
ecological integrity, and may refer to real estate investment trusts, companies that
make conservation, urban revitalisation and sustainability a key part of their corporate
strategy, and a range of private funds with similar objectives. Distilling these ideas
into a single notion, we can condently point to SRI being broadly concerned with
equity, durability and function at three levels: the broad scale of social networks, the
more intimate level of relationships and the individual quantum of well-being (Kimmet,
2008). All three of these levels feed into the productivity mix and effectively
incorporate all of the SRI specic issues identied in the literature. And when sought to
be maximised in terms of public good outcomes, resulting sustainability outcomes not
only include, but can also reach far beyond, environmental concerns.
While it may not fall within their remit of duciary responsibility, what investors
must realise is that despite the intangible nature of human-centric outcomes, the most
valuable aspects of real estate assets are those that provide the best possible human
outcomes into the future. These benets arguably build demand and result in higher
and more sustained returns, although much of the evidence for this remains anecdotal.
This alone elevates the importance of social sustainability in real estate value
calculations, and is therefore bringing a particular focus to construction and
management standards as a major factor in improving the worth of asset holdings.
Understanding what actually makes up desirable real estate therefore underpins an
appreciation of social sustainability within a property context. Properties alone are
only part of the equation. How humans interact with the space, and how the space itself
facilitates interaction between its users and investors as stakeholders in common over
the three levels identied above is just as important (Haynes, 2008).
A considerable amount of research has already been undertaken attempting to
establish links between good corporate citizenship and nancial performance in
business generally (Gottsman and Kessler, 1998; Austin et al., 1999; SustainAbility,
2001). However, not much of this literature relates to property investment, despite the
anecdotal evidence that is accumulating. Indeed, it is something of a holy grail for
academics active in this area to produce the rst empirical studies that statistically
prove there is a signicant correlation between ethical real estate investment and
increased prosperity.
In terms of business studies then, Gottsman and Kessler (1998) compared the
nancial returns of the S&P 500 against three sub-samples based on four measures of
environmental performance. They divided rms into the top 75, 50 and 25 per cent of
environmental performers across all industries and found no statistically signicant
differences in nancial performance between the three categories. More promising is
the study by Austin et al. (1999) which placed rms into green and brown
categories to test differences in environmental performance, and sorted rms into
black and red groups, according to nancial performance. They then used
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regression analysis to nd a signicant relationship between nancial and
environmental performance but could not identify which direction the causality ran.
However, what cannot be denied is the increasing popularity of fund members
choosing an ethical investment stream when on offer, and by and large the
comparatively well-performed nature of those funds. And more recently, Watson et al.
(2004) tested a framework that quanties environmental management system (EMS)
improvements to determine the impact on nancial performance, nding that EMS
strategies at the very least do not negatively impact a rms economic bottom line.
While we need much more research on the link between SRI strategies and asset
performance, what we do know is that in individual cases, environmental performance
can increase shareholding value. A good deal of research associated with the Natural
capitalism approach that has emerged from the Rocky Mountain Institute and
like-minded think tanks has no problem proving the protability of renewable
resource-based industry, but this is largely positioned within a niche market
framework (Hawken et al., 1999, pp. 38-9). This leaves mainstream real estate
investment largely unstudied. Nevertheless, research undertaken for the Business
Council of Australia (2004) suggests that we are less than a decade away from the
imperatives of sustainability, economic growth and social progress becoming aligned
to the extent that the dichotomy between economic growth and environmental
protection is largely laid to rest. And as international politics is squarely focussed on
climate change as we move towards the end of the rst decade of the millennium, this
prediction appears to be very realistic.
An argument worth considering though is that talk of a more sustainable real estate
investment climate emerging is really only picking up on Stern report-type predictions
that sustainability, understood largely as greenhouse gas reduction initiatives, provide
growth and prosperity opportunities while lowering exposure to risk (Stern, 2006).
This supports earlier ndings such as those that emerge from the study by Deegan and
his colleagues, who looked at why some Australian companies have markedly
improved the disclosure of information in their annual reports, tracing it back to
responses to major social and environmental incidents (Deegan et al., 2000). Likewise,
Owen and Lehman (2000, p. 2) argue that management considers annual reports to be
a publicity device that may reduce the adverse perceptions of some sections of
the community toward modern corporations. From this perspective, prot remains the
universal language of real estate investment and will continue to do so. What this
means is that demonstrating how prots can be achieved and even enhanced by
socially responsible behaviour is perhaps the greatest challenge facing property
investment scholars today.
Differentiating between SRCPI and SCPI
Sustainability is a powerful buzzword for good reason. It is strongly connected to
notions such as endurance, exibility, quality and alternative thinking all of which
are increasingly emerging as building blocks of nancially successful enterprise. It is
worthwhile therefore to think through how and where the term intersects with social
responsibility. Let us rst consider the temporal component. SCPI almost exclusively
applies to green buildings and extensively refurbished assets that incorporate a
range of efciency features that have tapped into technological advances. This leaves a
very large, unsustainable building stock that will perhaps take decades to upgrade,
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or be demolished altogether, which is often the most unsustainable phase of all.
By contrast SRCPI, which typically can include all, any one of, or a combination of
screening against major polluters, weapon makers, gambling providers, and tobacco
and alcohol industries, community investment in areas underserved by traditional
nancial institutions, and shareholder advocacy aimed at broader corporate
ownership (Pivo, 2005, p. 16) applies to all assets, whether green or not. It implies
more efcient management, which inevitably means partnering with users (Kimmet,
2007). And as pioneering schemes such as Australias Investa Property Groups
Greenhouse Guarantee suggest, this can achieve very signicant efciency gains.
Investa, which is now owned by US-based Morgan Stanley, are partnering with
energy conservation systems to provide tenants with access to products and expertise
at competitive rates that reect the economies of scale that a portfolio of over a million
square metres and more than 1,200 tenants command. The Groups main claim is that
the guarantee offers tenants potential savings of between 20 and 30 per cent in their
energy bills through better energy management. Launched in 2006, Investa argue that
tenants costs can be recovered within a year or two, and thereafter savings in the order
of 20 per cent of outgoings per annum can be generated. The hook for tenants is the
guarantee itself. If energy consumption exceeds the guaranteed negotiated target, the
cost of any energy consumed in excess of those targets is refunded by Investa and
Green Power is purchased to deliver the reduction in greenhouse emissions. If the
tenancy performance is better than the guarantee, tenants get to keep the savings.
Until its delisting upon becoming a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley Real Estate in late
2007, the Investa Group was rated rst globally in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index
for the real estate sector and nancial services super-sector. This, it is suggested, was
because Investa have been socially responsibly investing and managing rather than
investing purely in sustainable commercial property (Kimmet, 2005). Despite having
no purpose built new green buildings in their portfolio of over 30 aging commercial
high-rise buildings, the Group has managed to: reduce water consumption across its
portfolio of commercial ofce buildings by 37 per cent, cut greenhouse gas emissions
by a total of more than 50,000 tonnes of CO
2
through efciency measures and
renewable energy procurement, reduce electricity use by 21 per cent and natural gas by
43 per cent, and have diverted more than 60 per cent of tenants ofce waste from
landll to recycling between 2002 and 2007. These initiatives have been supported by
green lease proposals amongst their tenants, which mutually obliges both tenants
and landlord to be as efcient as possible in the way buildings are used and managed.
This approach to green leasing is in stark contrast to the wider industry approach that
views green leases as those that relate to new green buildings only.
In essence, what schemes such as Greenhouse Guarantee do is invoke
limit-conscious systems thinking in commercial property management (Lorenz
et al., 2008). Such an approach rethinks the premise that growth sustains prot, and
challenges the arguably dominant idea that sustainability is essentially the task of
making resource and waste-intensive practices obsolete through technological change
alone. Instead it recognises the embodied energy of existing assets, and aims to
redesign, re-use, reconnect and incrementally adapt buildings to human processes and
interactions that reect the natural and social environment. Recent discussions with
Investas Craig Roussac, who is responsible for the groups environmental and social
policy, has revealed though that tenants have generally been less than committed to
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the mutually obligatory actions to be taken in managing their workplaces. This is not
surprising given that however efcient tenants are they know that they are no better
off nancially. This has prompted Investa to redraft the guarantee to incorporate
penalties as well as incentives in the scheme, which gives it a look and feel more like
Lend Lease Lincolne Scott Advanced Environmentals Efcient Building Scheme
(EBS) proposal. Admittedly, the EBS is entirely focussed on new building work and
renovations, but it is intended to operate in much the same way as an emissions
trading scheme the main difference being that it recognises energy efciency rather
than focus entirely on emission avoidance.
Perhaps, one way to induce the majority of commercial property managers to adopt
this type of socially responsible approach is to nd ways to further enable and
empower the community to rst understand what is required, and then to partner with
them to secure the desired outcome. By all accounts at least some citizens in the wider
community are increasingly exercising their role as stakeholders, and becoming more
courageous, eloquent and opportunist as an advocate for rights, wellbeing and the
environment. However, while there is a gradual redistribution of power measured by
the increased visibility of community at the negotiating table, it is limited what
organised communities can achieve in a society that is clearly captured by the desire to
make money. For the shift to continue it appears, efforts need to be made by investors
and their managers to meet communities halfway, explicitly through the medium of a
robust and explicit social responsibility ethic.
The message which can potentially fuel social responsibility is that natural
resources provide uneven nancial benets, while being subsidised by the entire
human and biota current and future populations of Earth. Specically, the explosion of
wealth since the industrial revolution has been underwritten by resource extraction,
which inevitably nds expression in growth of all sorts. Markets may be expanding,
but so are market choices. Over time an empowered and increasingly aware
community can be expected to make choices in their own interests. Those rms that
understand this and begin to incorporate community and ecologically inspired visions
into their real estate investment plans will be the rst to take advantage of this
anticipated market shift. And at least some investors appear to be doing this by
building a greener brand, perhaps in the short-term with unsubstantiated greenwash,
but over the longer term, these claims will increasingly need to be validated.
In this respect, Tillett et al.s (1970, pp. 314-15) analysis of the work of C.I. Barnard is
instructive:
The equilibrium of the organization is not based on the individual alone but also on other
organizations, and the larger society. Thus, any kind of social change, in the economy, the
distribution of power in society, or the labour market, will alter the organization, even though
the goals of the organization may not formally change. The relationship of the organization to
the environment is not static but a functional one.
This suggests that the organisation, as the instrument of real estate marketing and
investment, can be, and perhaps can only be re-oriented towards sustainability by
changes within society itself. This echoes Putnams (1993, p. 6) observation that
economics does not predict civics, but civics does predict economics, better even than
economics itself. And as our current society is so caught up in making money, it is the
prospect of making even more of it that is most likely to generate real change in the
mainstream.
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Indeed, it is the rationality of money making that helps to explain why there is a
tendency by at least some real estate investors to interpret economic sustainability to
mean sustaining a prot surplus. This is despite such a conception defying the obvious
limits to the blatantly unsustainable prolic use of non-renewable resources by modern
society. True, much scope remains for accumulating wealth by means of renewable
resources (Hawken et al., 1999). However, the distribution of wealth and its ultimate
conversion into goods and services inevitably builds pressure on nite natural capital
stocks.
Conclusions
Reporting commercial property performance as it is currently practised is simply
inadequate for progressing toward a more sustainable real estate future. A focus on
win-win, technocratic and procedural solutions to problems created by slavish
devotion to capital accumulation is not only elusive, but also further entrenches
business as usual practices at a time when clearly much more is required of the sector
in terms of the collective effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the like.
Nevertheless, a dependence on high-level technology and policy breakthroughs
(i.e. improved solar panel efciency and the implementation of carbon trading and
offsetting) accompanied by relatively trivial behavioural change (i.e. increased
recycling and public transport use) has become a dominating discourse assuring us
that progress is being made with social and environmental solutions. Meanwhile, it
distracts us from taking stock of what can actually meaningfully be done to preserve
resources and drastically cut emissions and waste.
The Stern report and similar nationally commissioned research such as Australias
Garnaut report, have argued at length that sustainable development presents a
business opportunity to expand into emerging green and niche markets, turn a
prot, and most certainly assist business and the planets survival in an increasingly
competitive market place (Howes and Singh, 1999). Such motivations clearly encourage
the greenwashing of real estate entities at a time when a fundamental cultural shift
towards a genuine and expansive social responsibility is clearly needed. And this shift
is even more elusive since the sub-prime driven economic crisis has changed the face of
the global economy, with governments increasingly conceding to industry pressure
and backing away from tough emission reduction targets.
McDonough and Braungart (2002, pp. 153-4) agree that sectors such as the property
industry assess their health as they always have economically and then tack on
bonus points for eco-efciency, reduced accidents or product liabilities, jobs created,
and philanthropy. However, they see a signicant difference when a socially
responsible approach to sustainability becomes the main driver rather than considered
as an afterthought (2002, p. 154). Such assertions underscore the importance of valuing
and reporting ethical strategies for the purpose of schooling industry and community
in the art of social responsibility.
If we are to assume that commercial property investment is fundamentally focussed
on prot making, as I argue in this paper we should, the question for those concerned
about more sustainable investment must surely be prot for whom, how, and for how
long? If sustainability implies prot-sharing in a public good sense, then all proceeds
must somehow meaningfully account for the net effect of producing and consuming
these prots on the Earths nite natural stocks. However, I have argued that the way
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the term has come to be used it does not imply this at all. Instead, it arguably refers to
investment as usual in a greener product. Only taking social responsibility seriously
can hold investors feet to the re over net public good outcomes that are broadly
interpreted.
While there is nothing wrong with sustained prots, making a connection between
protable returns over time and sustaining the planet is erroneous. It may be true that
sustainability is usually not embraced for pure prot motives, however, the main point
of this paper is to stake the claim that the limiting of SCPI to new and retro-tted green
buildings reects the hesitancy to promote a more meaningful social responsibility as
the guiding light to a more sustainable commercial property sector. And it follows that
as community-business alliances begins to increasingly demand more meaningful and
demonstrable sustainability in the built environment, premised on a clearer
articulation of what this actually means and what it might look like, the faster that
a more sustainable future for commercial property will arrive.
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Corresponding author
Philip Kimmet can be contacted at: p.kimmet@qut.edu.au
JPIF
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