Susanne Arvidsson
Associate professor, Centre Director
Corporate ESG reporting quantity, quality and performance : Where to now for environmental policy and practice?
Author
Summary, in English
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are driving corporate strategy and performance. However, does this mean more ESG reporting is being done? If so, is the quality of ESG reports improving? And what about ESG performance? In this paper, we examine these three trends in ESG reporting—quantity, quality and corporate ESG performance. With a Swedish multinational corporate focus, we analyse data from Sustainalytics, corporateregister.com and the Alliance for Corporate Transparency to answer our research questions. Our analysis shows that, while the quality of ESG information in Sweden has steadily improved, performance plateaued around 2015. Mitigating problems such as the impacts of climate change and COVID-19 call for improved ESG performance, not improved ESG reporting quantity or quality. Thus, rather than focusing on improving ESG reporting regulations, we need to redirect our focus towards creating better ESG outcomes. Therefore, we argue that companies must be asked to provide data that are more timely, relevant, credible and comparable and that demonstrate improved ESG performance. With this information, financial analysts and investors can redirect and accelerate capital flows towards corporate investments that help tackle important problems related to climate crises and the reaching of a sustainable development. Our analysis reveals that we need more research focusing on consumers, investors and policymakers. Future scholars could explore how changing consumer preferences are driving improvements in ESG performance and how changing capital market allocations affect ESG performance.
Department/s
- Accounting and Corporate Finance
Publishing year
2022-03
Language
English
Pages
1091-1110
Publication/Series
Business Strategy and the Environment
Volume
31
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- climate change
- ESG information quality
- ESG performance
- ESG reporting quality
- EU Green Deal
- financial market
- reporting regulation
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0964-4733