Finsif on tukenut vuosittain vastuullisen sijoittamisen tutkimusta stipendein
Finsif on jakanut stipendejä vastuullisesta sijoittamisesta kiinnostuneille opiskelijoille ja tutkijoille. Stipendien jaon tarkoituksena on ollut edistää vastuullisen sijoittamisen tutkimustyötä.
As investors and other stakeholders are asking for enhanced corporate sustainability, companies may
encounter difficulties with how to improve their sustainability commitment and performance. One indicator that stakeholders are interested in is the ESG score, which measures companies’ environmental, social, and corporate governance performance. My thesis aims to recognise different configurations of strategic and governance attributes that companies can implement in their strategies to improve their ESG scores.
The following explanatory conditions used: gender and ethnic diversity in the board, board size, board meeting attendance, independence in the board, CEO power, presence of a CSR committee, CSR reporting and R&D expenses. These are combined in 5 groups: structural diversity, effective attendance, board control, CSR focus and R&D expenses. These governance and strategic attributes are all likely to influence ESG commitment and performance. Leadership traits such as boardroom diversity, board control and board size and effectiveness are likely to impact the strategic decisions and offer a higher and more diverse set of skills, knowledge and resources to achieve targets. The directors make both direct and indirect decisions regarding sustainability, and this thesis will study how the chosen explanatory conditions together influence ESG scores.
I use a sample of 70 North American industrial sector companies. The sample is chosen as the industrial sector is one of the main contributors to climate change, and thus are under significant pressure to improve their sustainability commitment and performance. I chose to use a configurational methodology, which provides multiple solutions to reach one outcome. The fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is an approach to find different paths (configurations) that lead to a certain outcome. In my thesis, I look for different configurations of strategic and corporate governance attributes that lead to a high ESG score.
The main analysis results in two configurations leading to high ESG scores: the focused engagement strategy, where effective board attendance and CSR focus are present, and structural diversity is absent, and the holistic governance strategy, where effective attendance, board control, CSR focus, and R&D intensity are present. While the focused engagement strategy links the absence of structural diversity to high ESG scores, the holistic governance strategy is indifferent to its presence or absence. This leads to the assumption that in the industrial sector, structural diversity is not an important factor leading to higher ESG scores. On the other hand, CSR focus and bigger and more active boards hold high importance in the industrial sector, as these are present in both of the configurations.
In addition to the main analysis, a subsample analysis is performed by splitting the data in two based on firm size. For small firms, the most important conditions are CSR focus, which is present in all three configurations for high ESG scores and decentralized board control and effective board attendance, which are both present in two of the three configurations. For large firms, the most important conditions are board control and effective attendance.
The key contribution of this study is that it offers different approaches that companies can use to improve their ESG commitment and performance through governance and strategic decisions and priorities. It must be noted that the sample size is relatively small and only includes North American industrial sector companies, so the results do not necessarily translate to all contexts.
Julia Karinto, Aalto Yliopisto
Tutkielman voi lukea täällä.
