The Internationl Research Group in Financial and Fiduciary Ethics

• What’s New ?
• About Us^φ
  • Mission
  • Direction and Orientation Committee
  • Partnerships
  • Researchers and Contributors
  • Contacts
• La lettre du GIREF^φ
• Research Program
  • Governance and Diversity of Organizations
  • Financial Institutions
  • Infrastructures and Public Services
  • Assessment and Rating of Organizations
• FidRisk
• Publications
• GIREF Working Papers
• Thesis and Briefs
• Scholarships
• The Coalition for the Protection of Investors
• Contact us
• French

 

Research program

GIREF^φ’s research program is centered on international level comparative analysis of fiduciary governance methods, including:

• Different organizational models created and implemented within diverse institutional contexts;
• Various types of financial bodies in different institutional contexts;
• Institutional investors;
• The role of politics in exemplary fiduciary governance.

Overview

The objective of GIREF^φ is to consolidate and further expand a worldwide research team which activities relate to the fiduciary performance of organizations, focusing on the level of confidence individuals have toward organizations of the private sector, the public sector and in NGOs. Continuing research in the field is imperative.

GIREF’s goal is to assemble a team of researchers and experts who possess extensive knowledge of “extra-financial” performance of organizations in various countries. The team can then provide “in-country” researchers with the means to enable them to advance and consolidate their research work on fiduciary performance.

Since the perception of reliability can vary from one nation and culture to another and from one institutional framework to another, the current state of market globalization compels us to remain fully aware that any crisis can degenerate in systemic crisis. Furthermore, the consequences can spread far beyond the border of the country where it originated.

Within our increasingly volatile and crisis-prone global community, GIREF^φ members believe that corporate leaders, regulators and lawmakers must understand the concept of fiduciary performance in order to be able to measure it, reinforce it and even restore it in the event of crisis.

The first phase of GIREF^φ action plan is to support research associated with the concept of fiduciary performance of organizations, while the second is to initiate and support research projects and practices that can be related to this concept. And the third focuses on the identification, the development and the improvement of methods and tools for effectively evaluating, measuring, comparing and monitoring fiduciary performances of organizations.
Analysis takes into account evaluation criteria that have been implemented over the last twenty years: social and environmental ratings, governance ratings, fiduciary ratings, etc. The purpose is to evaluate the potential input of those tools in the build-up of a global and integrated system of fiduciary performance of organizations and to verify their impact on the financial performance of the organizations.

Approach

To understand, to explain and to improve, even to transform, the complex relationship between individuals and financial organizations, the object of the research program of GIREF^φ is:

• To study, as an innovative social entity, the making and the development of the level of confidence of organizations.
• The result of the level of confidence is called “fiduciary performance” as opposed to financial performance. Fiduciary derived from the Latin “Fiducia”, which means confidence. Therefore to study the means, the  methods, the indicators and the criteria developed to measure and to evaluate fiduciary performance by taking into consideration:
• the various modes of organization of the private sector, the public sector or the social economy;
• the several contexts within the development of organizations.

Research Themes

The research program of GIREF^φ covers four main themes:

1. To develop the conceptual basis of fiduciary governance of organizations and its measure, the fiduciary performance;
2.  To measure, assess, compare the performance of fiduciary governance of different types of organizations;
3. To study the links between the performance of fiduciary governance and the financial performance of organizations;
4. To analyze the links between the determining factors of public policy and the performance of fiduciary governance of organizations.

Scopes of application

The application areas of GIREF^φ research program are:

1. Governance of various types of organizations:
   • Non-profit corporations;
   • Non-profit institutions;
   • Foundations;
   • NGO
   • Etc.
2. Financial institutions:
   • Cooperative banks and share capital banks;
   • Asset management companies;
   • Pension funds and other capital accumulation plans;
   • Insurance companies and mutual insurance;
   • Micro-finance and micro-insurance institutions
3. Various types of liability modes of infrastructures and public services: 
   • Direct control, agency, delegated management, PPP, PFI, semipublic company, private mode, etc.
4. Methods of assessment and rating.