Enhancing the capability of investors: How constructive design can change the practice of socially responsible investing

The concept of socially responsible investing has raised awareness among investment professionals. However, there are still many practical difficulties that limit the capability of them to take real actions. One of which is the variety of reporting standards in sustainability performance that constrains their capability to make a comparison of the potential portfolio companies. This thesis examines how the capability approach and constructive design can enhance the capabilities of investment professionals in socially responsible investing. In order to answer this question, this thesis employed a constructive design process iterated through cycles of prototyping and validation in coordination with Work Ahead, a Finnish startup that develops software for businesses to enhance ethics and sustainability performance in supply chains. Throughout the research, 18 participants (investment professionals, consultants, and core members of Work Ahead) were recruited for interviews and tests. Moreover, a workshop was organized at the annual conference of European Business Angels Network 2019 in Helsinki for gathering feedback from investment professionals. The primary outcome of this research is a web-based interactive reporting platform, which visualizes the data of workplace wellbeing survey conducted by Work Ahead. This platform also allows its users to communicate with each other for further engagement. The proposed website design was prototyped iteratively and tested as to whether it would enhance the capabilities for socially responsible investing of its users. The findings revealed that the proposed design should: 1) provide various options for data export and guidance to integrate the results of the surveys to the other relevant data sources; 2) deal with the data insufficiency by offering suggestions on the relevance between data, standards, and frameworks; 3) deliver encouragement and facilitate peer support; and 4) enable stakeholders to cooperate through a better communication channel. The design would still require further observation of the actual long-term cooperation enabled by this platform and the capabilities it serves to enhance. As the capability approach functioned merely as an analytical framework, this thesis also sheds light on the future development of epistemology and methodology for applying this approach in the field of design