To realize the promise of responsible investment, we need to rethink its relationship to values.

Proponents of responsible investing have been either championing or silencing values. From the 1970s through the early 2000s, when responsible investing was still called ethical investing, religious investors and other early innovators were unapologetically championing values. But this approach condemned responsible investing to remain a niche. Then, around 2008, responsible investing morphed into ESG investing. ESG investing brought responsible investing to the mainstream by silencing values that were once core to it. But starting around 2021, the ESG backlash successfully spread the idea that ESG investing builds on outlandish (“woke”) values. By 2025, many pundits are declaring ESG investing as practically dead.

The way forward for responsible investing lies in what we call a normative siege, as illustrated in the drawing above. Think of financial markets as a town that has distinct and highly efficient ways of operating. Values, in this metaphor, should not take over the town but expert pressure from outside by laying siege to the town. One part of the siege is that asset owners better articulate the values they want their investments to reflect. We show that when pension funds explore what matters for their beneficiaries, they find a surprising degree of normative common ground among many beneficiaries. The other part of the siege is that mission-driven asset managers develop new investment approaches that better reflect the values of asset owner, thereby expanding mainstream asset managers’ view of what is possible.

In response to the ESG backlash, most proponents of responsible investing have doubled down on the business case. Not us. A proper defense against the critique that responsible investing builds on outlandish (“woke”) values is not to deny that values underpin responsible investing, but to deny that these values are outlandish. Our book shows that many investors share normative common ground and that these values can be organized into a siege that will make help realize the promise of responsible investing. This book is for anyone who wants their values to have a place in their investments but doubts that values on their own will move the needle. Join the siege.