Mohamed Zarki is a new DBA student at the FEDE Doctoral School and a bold entrepreneur. His research will focus on an emerging form of investment: socially responsible investment.
What did you study?
I have a Bachelor’s in Management Science (Kedge Business School, Bordeaux, 2012) and a Master’s in the same subject and from the same institution. Thanks to the mark I obtained for my master’s dissertation, I came top in entrepreneurship and finance.
What’s your current job role?
After working in financial communications and founding several businesses (hairdressing and insurance sectors), I now head an insurance company and a company that helps people wishing to study abroad. The latter, which is based in Tetouan, Morocco, offers language lessons, interview preparation and assistance with writing CVs.
What is the subject of your DBA?
My DBA focuses on the impact of socially responsible investment (SRI) in emerging countries. Classical financial theories assume that markets are efficient and investors rational – i.e. they choose their portfolios according to fixed financial criteria and subject to their level of aversion to risk. With the development of socially responsible investment in the mid-1990s, these theories underwent a number of changes. It’s these changes I will be focusing on.
Can you say more?
Socially responsible investors include extra-financial considerations in their portfolio management strategies; this represents a departure from classical financial theory. Consequently, the rise of this new form of investment has created waves in the scientific community and a large number of academic publications on the subject are now available. However, existing research has mostly focused on the performance of socially responsible investment in major Western financial markets. I will be working on the nature and importance of SRI in emerging countries.
