PPS Investments chief investment officer David Crosoer argues that modern society has shifted from valuing how a game is played to obsessing over winning. In an opinion piece, he reflects on the tension between purposeful, principled behavior and the pressure to measure and game results.
Playing to win
“If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count. If you can measure it, it will be gamed,” Crosoer writes. He contrasts this with a broader, older notion that the manner of play matters as much as the result. The professional era, he suggests, has replaced the amateur era, and the ability to afford a loss is increasingly viewed as a marker of privilege rather than character.
Crosoer recalls a personal moment from his daughter’s first soccer match. When she applauded an opponent’s goal, her teammates scolded her for not being competitive. He notes that her reaction offered a glimpse of a different way to show up, but it was collectively scorned and never repeated. He links this memory to his work evaluating asset managers through Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) surveys.
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Assessing how “sportingly” asset managers behave proves difficult. Fairness is subjective, yet professionals rely on regulatory disclosures to gauge how close companies are to crossing ethical lines. These include EU Principal Adverse Impact (PAI) disclosures and broad-based BEE scorecards. The metrics track climate and transformation, but also map to specific UN Sustainable Development Goals like education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), and sustainable consumption (SDG12).
Where the rules matter
Crosoer benchmarks more than 50 asset managers and analyzes thousands of listed entities. His analysis shows that where explicit or impending regulation exists, such as for racial transformation, meaningful progress occurs. Where the imperative is secondary, like for gender transformation, progress is weaker. In areas with haphazard regulation, such as climate, progress is almost nonexistent.
He contrasts this regulatory reality with a principled South African who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize and an English football club found guilty of egregious cheating to win. Crosoer suggests that while measuring ESG metrics effectively has value, especially when they are aspirational, selling short the expectation that returns alone justify any method is a mistake.
