Do Companies in Different Industries Respond Differently to Stakeholders’ Pressures When Prioritising Environmental, Social and Governance Sustainability Performance?

Rendani Mavis Matakanye, Huibrecht Margaretha van der Poll and Binganidzo Muchara
Additional contact information
Rendani Mavis Matakanye: Midrand Campus, Sustainable Livelihoods, Graduate School of Business Leadership, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Huibrecht Margaretha van der Poll: Midrand Campus, Sustainable Livelihoods, Graduate School of Business Leadership, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Binganidzo Muchara: Midrand Campus, Sustainable Livelihoods, Graduate School of Business Leadership, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Pretoria 0002, South Africa

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-22

Abstract: Good sustainability decisions depend on how companies respond to wide-ranging exposure to exogenous and endogenous pressures. The purpose of the article was to determine whether companies in different industries respond differently to stakeholders’ pressures when prioritising Environmental, Social and Governance sustainability performance (ESG-SP) activities. Data of six sectors, with a total of 75 companies was extracted from the CSRHub database, which is a rating agency that focuses on assessing ESG performance of companies. The ANOVA, pairwise comparative and multiple comparison Tukey HSD tests were applied to compare mean scores across the sectors. Overall industry scores show no evidence of ESG-SP differences across industries in the sectors examined. It was however revealed that three (3) out of twelve ESG ratings have significant differences namely: Community Development and Philanthropy; Human Rights and Supply Chain; as well as Compensation and Benefits. The study found that the type of industry does not have a significant role in determining the ESG rating of a company. Future studies can look at a longitudinal analysis to shed light on the pattern of sustainability practices across companies that are listed on the JSE.

Keywords: sustainable development; sustainability performance (SP); sustainability reporting (SR); environmental, social and governance (ESG); ESG disclosure; greenwashing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12022/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12022/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:21:p:12022-:d:668929

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().