Company behavior and investing

In reading about an update on the deal with the devil that Microsoft made in order to secure business in China, I was curious as to the thoughts of the personal finance blog crowd if they take company behavior into account when investing. There has been a large movement of socially responsible investing in the last decade, with watchdog groups and mutual funds established for those that want to vote with their dollars.

I tend to be a politically incorrect person to start with and a firm believer in markets, so I haven't really followed the socially responsible investing movement. I’m happy to make money on companies that are publicly traded, regardless of their product lines, as long as what they are doing is sanctioned as legal. If they can do that by appealing to the socially responsible investing crowd, fine. And if they manufacture cigarettes, legal firearms or gambling machines, for example, that’s fine with me too (although I’ve never directly invested in such a company…but for all I know some of my mutual funds have).

The Microsoft scenario raises an interesting question for my outlook, though. What is sanctioned by the government in China (censorship of weblogs for such heretical terms as “democratic movement” and “independence”) is far from acceptable to me. And while I wasn’t looking too hard at investing in Microsoft, even though I think it is greatly undervalued, should I completely rule out ever trading in it?

Again, I’m not looking at entering into a political or company-bashing discussion, but I am interested in other bloggers’ opinions and approaches when it comes to investing in companies whose actions they approve or disprove of. Or do you even look into that factor?