Rethinking Finance in the Face of New Challenges provides an overview of the new research perspectives devoted to financial activity, reconsidering the opposition between orthodox and heterodox schools of finance. The purpose is to identify new theoretical and practical issues around the concepts of values, radical uncertainty, and financial instability, but also to examine the consequences of the financialisation process on the dynamics of organisations and markets, as well as on value production mechanisms. This fifteenth volume of Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability begins by exploring the globalisation and financialisation of economies, central banks and corporate strategies before switching to focus on financial value as a historically situated social construct. The book then examines the relationship between finance, social value and sustainable development and presents several avenues for reflection with a view to a paradigmatic renewal of research and teaching in finance. At a time when an unprecedented infectious and sanitary crisis is generating disastrous financial, economic, social and societal repercussions, the work presented in this book will stimulate reflection and contribute to the renewal of a Finance that now has to face many new social, societal and environmental challenges.

As a response to ongoing economic, social and environmental crises, many private actors have enlarged their definition of 'value' to include environmental and social elements. Such practices, however, appear incompatible with the current epistemological structure of academic financial discourse. This paradox challenges us to reconsider the foundations of modern finance, particularly the dominant role of shareholders. The volume argues there is a need to turn the established order upside down. Studies in economics and finance have to be embedded in environmental and social welfare to answer the challenges we face, and there is a need for a radical break with the methodological individualism that dominates economics, management and (especially) finance. It is our responsibility to question social welfare when it is defined only as maximising shareholder value. Should we instead promote a substitute to the shareholder? How should we (re)define the concept of value? This volume serves as a stepping stone for rethinking academic finance, and attempts to carve out innovative paths for financial research in the 21st century.

The recent global financial crisis has indicated that the conventional dominant paradigm in finance is unable to cope with the problems of financial systems, markets, and behaviour of financial institutions, and failed to understand the proper role of finance in society and the economic system as a whole. Drawing on the recent movements of corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing and sustainable development, this volume goes further to examine the ongoing making of financial reality towards social responsibility and sustainability, and aims at a better understanding of finance as a collective construct and endeavour embedded in societal context. Bringing together leading scholarly thinking, this collection opens new avenues of comprehending corporate social responsibility, reveals mechanisms and strategies in shaping the reality of responsible finance, searches alternative approaches towards financial sustainability, and explores new thinking of coping with complex financial choice and financial risks. Moving away from the conventional financial paradigm, this volume demonstrates paradigm shifting in the financial world and provides fresh insights on how we may reshape the financial reality to enable societal betterment and prevent any future financial crisis.