Dissertations / Theses: 'Environmental Social Governance (ESG)'

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Arias, Mariakamila. "ESG Disclosures & Materiality." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2011.

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Increasing concern regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts are influencing investor decisions. The growing risk of climate change impacts poses a risk to long-term sustainable economic growth and returns. Additionally, increasing societal concern over corporate ESG impacts also poses a risk to corporate efficiency and success. As a result of these increasing risks investors, both retail and institutional, are participating in ESG investment strategies. Such strategies take into account corporate ESG impacts and behaviors, however, ESG information and data is not easily available. This thesis will examine the current ESG investing landscape, more specifically what investors are demanding. For the most part, investors want reliable data that they can use in their investment strategies, however, the ESG information available is insufficient, unreliable, and incomparable as ESG reporting and disclosures are not currently mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One available solution to this obstacle is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), which guides corporations on how to optimally disclose on its ESG impacts. Unfortunately, this solution on its own is not enough. SEC intervention is clearly needed to enforce and regulate ESG disclosure to avoid the challenges of voluntary ESG reporting. Furthermore, the concept of materiality implies a corporate duty to report on ESG issues as there is strong evidence indicating its influence over investors' decisions. Likewise, the SEC has a duty to regulate this information. While this thesis suggests the SASB framework as a possible solution to the deficiency of ESG information, its goal is not to solve the issue, but rather merely begin the discussion.

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Engström, Fredrika, and Sanna Martinsson. "Environmental, Social and Governance-Ratings and Risk in Sweden." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-172222.

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Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are increasingly important subjects in today's society. To measure a company's Corporate Social Performance (CSP); the ESG-rating has been developed throughout the years. As investors and the public are starting to acknowledge a company's sustainable actions and the importance of these, more and more companies choses to be rated using ESG-rating. As the knowledge around the subject has started to increase, we want to find out if it affects the risk of a company or an investment? Theories relating to the topic, such as stakeholder theory, suggests that satisfying all of a company’s stakeholders creates value for a company. Previous studies in the topic has interpreted this as high ESG-ratings should equal lower risks for the company. Additionally, previous studies in the relationship between sustainability and profitability shows a positive correlation between the two, meaning that companies that incorporate sustainability in general have higher profits. The purpose of this study is to investigate if high ESG-ratings could lead to lower firm’s risk in Sweden. There has been a lot of previous research in the area, but none focusing on Sweden. The majority of the previous studies have concluded that there exists a negative relationship between CSP and a firm’s risk, which indicates that if a company would integrate CSR it could lower the risk. This study will include 145 Swedish companies with 2,610 firm-year observations from the period 2001-12-21 to 2019-12-31. The risk measures used are; Total Risk (Volatility), Systematic Risk (Beta) and Idiosyncratic Risk. As for the ESG-ratings, the data is obtained from ASSET4 from the database Thomson Reuters Eikon as the measure of CSP. Furthermore a multiple regression analysis is performed to statistically investigate the relationship between a company's ESG-rate (and the three pillars Environmental, Social and Governance) and risk. The study concluded that there exists a statistically significant positive relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk and the ESG-score for Swedish firms. As for the individual pillars; Environmental (ENV), Social (SOC) and Governance (GOV); the result indicated that there existed a statistically significant positive relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk with the two pillars; ENV and GOV, respectively. This suggests that the higher ESG-score, ENV and GOV-scores of Swedish firms the higher Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk. Neither Volatility or Idiosyncratic risk showed a statistically significant relationship with the social pillar. Consequently we are not able to confirm the relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk with the Social pillar. Regarding Beta, the study found no statistically significant relationship with the ESG-score, as well as for the individual pillars; Environmental, Social and Governance. Therefore we are not able to confirm a relationship for Beta and the ESG-score, ENV, SOC and GOV-scores. As a final remark this study concluded the opposite as for previous research and consequently this thesis has contributed with new knowledge within the area of ESG-rating and risk for Swedish companies.

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Håkansson, Caroline, and Kristin Salu. "Sustainability in the European Union : The Role of Financial Development in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Performance." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Nationalekonomi, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-176781.

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This thesis addresses the relationship between financial development and CSR performance, based on countries within the EU. The main objective of this thesis is to critically analyse and discuss the impact of financial development on CSR performance, through using ESG performance as a proxy. Additionally, this study aims at analysing the inclusion of institutional factors when examining the relationship. While the issue of how financial development impacts individual sustainability dimensions is quite well-researched, only one study is found to examine the precise relationship between financial development and ESG performance, concluding a positive linkage in Asia. No similar study is found in the region of the EU. We find the relationship to be complex, where various channels of influence are identified when examining ESG dimensions separately. To examine this relationship, we used panel data regression analysis, based on country level data for EU’s individual member states. Our findings show a complex relationship, implying that financial development has various impacts on ESG performance and varies throughout the range of financial development. This is in contrast to previous empirical research regarding the relationship, concluding an overall positive impact. This study provides no evidence that institutional factors affect the relationship between financial development and ESG performance, but argues for the importance of institutional inclusion, due to the identified influence on ESG practices through channels such as governing laws, regulations, norms and culture. Finally, financial development is concluded as an important catalyst to promote ESG performance within the EU. When suggesting any policy implementation, it is important to keep in mind that different countries within the EU may have different needs regarding the most efficient approach to increase ESG.

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Naik, Dakshesh. "The relationship between Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure and financial performance of South African listed equities." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/64895.

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The objective was to understand the relationship between environmental, social and governmental (ESG) disclosure and financial performance. An ESG disclosure scorecard enabled a univariate ranked style-based graphical time-series analysis approach to determine associations with share returns. Findings were that portfolios with the highest ranked ESG disclosure had the lowest financial performance whereas the fourth portfolio quintile was found to have the highest CFP. A longer time period for analysis could ensure differentiation between temporary and permanent changes on the dependent variable. This study contributes to ESG literature in South Africa by granulising the metric of analysis using aggregated ESG disclosure scores.
Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
nk2018
Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)
MBA
Unrestricted

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Whitelock, Vincent George Ph D. "Relationship between Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Management and Performance – The Role of Collaboration in the Supply Chain." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1450087632.

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Gelotte, Kevin. "A comparison between ESG funds and traditional funds from a sustainable perspectiv." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för matematik och matematisk statistik, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-121901.

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During recent years many fund managers have merchandised their funds as accounting for “ethical”, “responsible” and “sustainable” criterions during the investment process (the generic term “ESG funds” will be used hereafter). These managers have used this as a marketing tool and claimed that this brings added value to their investors. However, it has been very hard for investors to actually determine if the fund managers have been following these announced “ESG” criterions and strategies. In addition to this there have been a lot of discussions around whether or not funds that incorporate “ESG” criterions during their investment process sacrifice return in order to fulfill their obligations. During March this year Morningstar launched the first independent rating that aims to evaluate how the underlying holdings in fund, i.e. companies in which the fund own shares, manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. By analyzing the underlying holdings from the aspects mentioned above, Morningstar has been able to aggregate this information into a sustainability measure for funds. This new sustainability measure has been named Morningstar Sustainability Rating™, which is a rating for how sustainable a fund is. This thesis address questions regarding how ESG funds, or rather funds that market themselves as ESG funds, tend to have different attributes compared to traditional funds in the Nordic countries Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. The specific attributes that has been examined are relative fund flows, total returns, risk-adjusted ratings and sustainability ratings. The results suggest that ESG funds do not show a difference in Sustainability Ratings compared to traditional funds. Furthermore, it could be verified that ESG funds in some cases generate higher relative fund flows compared to traditional funds. It has also been confirmed that these ESG funds actually outperforms traditional funds from a total return perspective.

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Torpey, John F. "The Influence of Regulatory Oversight on Environmental, Social, and Governance Ratings." Franklin University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=frank1586421855928535.

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Goraya, Muhammad Imran, and Sardar Muhammad Usman. "How do Venture Capital Firms Incorporate ESG (Environment Social and Governance) Criteria into Investment Decision Making." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Umeå universitet, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-46644.

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The leaders of all countries of each sector and level of society are compelled to work together to address [social and environmental] challenges by maintaining sustainable human development and ensuring that the benefits of globalization are shared more widely. It is in the interests of businesses that these benefits continue both for companies and for others in society. The Venture Capital is a financial capital provided to the startup firms in their early stages which has a high potential for growth but also entail high risk. The Venture capital firms typically look for new and small businesses with a perceived long term growth potential that will result in a high payout for investors. Venture capital is a subset of private equity of the firms. On other hand, Private equity is an asset class consisting of equity securities, which are not quoted in the stock market. An investment in private equity most often involves either an investment of capital in a mature firms as well as buyout firms. The purpose of this study is to explore the gap between UK and U.S venture capital and private equity firms on the base of ESG criteria into investment decision making process. To find a relationship between venture capital and private equity firms mainstream investment with ESG criteria and also highlight new trends and the issues, which are potential barrier of ESG criteria implementation in UK and US firms. The authors used different academic literature, previous studies to find a gap and a relationship of ESG criteria into mainstream investment decision making process in UK and U.S firms. The research is based on both primary & secondary data under descriptive nature of study. A technique with the name of content analysis was used to collect the quantitative data from the U.K and U.S Venture Capital and Private Equity firms. These firms are further categorized in the sample size under the umbrella of clean tech and non-clean tech. Total sample size is 120 firms (60 VC & 60 PE), where 56 are clean tech and 64 are Non-clean tech firms. The find a relationship between variables regression analysis technique is used through SPSS for verifying the validity and variability of collected Data. We found that, an ESG criterion is on development stage, and there is no such technique and standards that are developed by the venture capital and private equity firms. We found, that firms are mostly focusing on responsible investment strategy; it is somehow same like whole ESG for purpose of their investment screening process. We found that ESG consideration in some UK and U.S venture capital and private equity firms exist, but vary from firms to firms. Some firms are considering just one factor while some other firms consider more than one. Large firms have more focus on ESG as compared to small firms; due to the nature of business and size, and number of employees, focus is only limited towards investment options and development of strategies for the firm. The result of this study interpret that the U.S firms are focusing more on investment returns, and pay less attention towards ESG as compared to U.K firms, Where UK Venture capital and private equity firms results shows that, they are more focused towards ESG and feel free to incorporate ESG criteria into their investment strategies without incurring any cost in terms of risk and returns.

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Kulakova, Iuliana. "The impact of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) practices on the financial performance of companies in emerging and frontier markets." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-264201.

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In this thesis, we explore the proprietary Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) scores and analyze their impacts on firm valuation using the sample of 166 companies operating in 35 emerging and frontier markets. Three methods of ESG scores, Principal Component Analysis and regression analysis are used. The results indicate an economically significant relationship between the overall ESG measure and firm value mainly driven by the “Environmental” and “Capital allocation” sub-scores. An exploratory principal component analysis and an extensive list of firm characteristics is also employed in our regression analysis to address problems identified in previous studies - construct validity and endogeneity. The PCA revealed dominance of Environmental and Social components in the variance of the total ESG score. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of proprietary ESG score and PCAderived index are recognized based on sector- and region level comparison and the opportunities to improve the ESG scorecard framework are identified.
In den uppsatsen, forskning går på Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) poäng och analyserar deras påverkan på företagsvärdering genom att använda ett urval av 166 företag som verkar i 35 frontier och tillväxtmarknader. Tre metoder av ESG mätning, Principal Component Analysis och regressionsanalyser tillämpades. Resultat tyder på ett ekonomiskt signifikant förhållande mellan totala ESG mätning och företagsvärdering vilket drivs av miljö och kapitalallokering delpoäng. Principalkomponentanalys och en utförlig lista av företagsegenskaper tillämpades också i våra regressionsanalyser för att adressera problem identifierade i tidigare studier - begreppsvaliditet och endogenitetsproblem. PCA tydde på dominans av miljöoch sociala aspekter i varians av den totala ESG poängen. Avslutningsvis, styrkor och svagheter av ESG-poäng och PCA-härlett index baserat på bransch- samt regionaljämförelser och möjligheterna för förbättring av ESG-mätning ramverk identifierades.

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Bui, Thi Mai Anh, and Alessandra Frongillo. "How does the market perceive ESG in IPOs : Investigating how ESG factors affect IPO Underpricing in the U.S. market." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-172446.

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Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) integration in financial activities is a crucial topic that is gaining importance in financial markets. During the years, many studies have been conducted about Initial Public Offering (IPO) and underpricing since they are fundamental aspects of firms’ lifecycle. Nevertheless, none of these studies have appropriately related firms’ ESG characteristics to IPO underpricing. In order to fill this knowledge gap, this thesis’s purpose is to investigate whether the ESG factors of a firm have effects on its IPO underpricing in the U.S stock market. The U.S has been chosen as it is the biggest stock market in the world and because of the quality and reliability of the data available for this country. A quantitative study is applied to investigate the relationship between ESG characteristics of the firms and the level of underpricing. First, to obtain the measurement of the ESG level of the pre-IPO firms, we have conducted two textual analysis of IPO prospectus, namely, term frequency and sentiment analysis. These indicators aim to show the disclosure level of ESG factors and whenever ESG is perceived negatively or positively by the market. Successively, the multiple regression is performed for each ESG indicator to find which measures have the analytical abilities to explain IPO underpricing. Based on the multiple regression results, we can conclude that the frequency of environmental & governance terms occurred in IPO prospectus, the negative tone, and the overall sentiment of the environmental context are significantly explaining IPO underpricing. These results have given meaningful answers for our research. The market does not perceive the social factors of a firm in the IPO context. On the other hand, environmental and governance aspects still attract the market’s attention in different ways. The market is concerned about the disclosure level of the governance activities and whether these activities are sufficiently mentioned in the prospectus. Meanwhile, the market takes into serious consideration the environmental activities of a firm by assessing the qualities of these activities. Moreover, the market is more sensitive to the negative information about environmental content than positive information in the IPO context. The textual analysis methods applied in this thesis have some limitations. However, this study has the reliability to confirm that some companies’ ESG factors affect IPO underpricing. As a consequence, it is possible to state that the market cares about ESG issues.

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Ruberg, Nicolaas. "Bert goes sustainable: an NLP approach to ESG financing." Master's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2021. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/24787/.

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Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors are a strategic topic for investors and financing institutions like the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). Currently, the bank’s experts are developing a framework based on those factors to assess companies' sustainable financing. We identify an opportunity to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) in this development. This opportunity arises from the observation that a critical document to the ESG analysis is the company annual activity report. This document undergoes a manual screening, and later it is decomposed, and its parts are redirected to specialists’ analysis. Therefore, the screening process would largely benefit from NLP to automate the classification of text excerpts from the annual report. The proposed solution is based on different Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) architectures, which rely on the attention mechanism to achieve optimal results on sentence-level analysis tasks. We devised a text classification task to enable the analysis of excerpts from the annual activity report of companies considering three categories, according to the ESG reference standard, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). To establish a benchmark, we implemented a baseline solution using a classic NLP approach, Naïve Bayes, which got a 51% accuracy and 50,33% F1-score. RoBERTa and BERT-large achieved 88% accuracy and almost 85% F1-score, the best results obtained from our experiments with different BERT architectures. Also, Albert showed to be a possible alternative for limited memory devices, with 85% accuracy and 78.5924% F1-score. Finally, we experimented with a multilingual setup that would be interesting for a scenario where the BNDES wants a more generic model that can analyze English or Portuguese annual reports. Bert multilingual model reached almost 86% accuracy and 81.18% F1-score.

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Amankwah, George, and Viyu Harrison Abonge. "Investigating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations in Venture Capital & Private Equity firms: A study in US and UK venture capital industry." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Umeå universitet, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-45293.

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Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues are becoming more and more significant for comprehensive evaluation of companies responsible investing activities. Over the years, the growth in corporate responsibility to the society and policies towards environmental consciousness has necessitated the need for comprehensive ESG integration into investment decision-making process and the impact of such activities on company‟s financial performance. Although, studies suggest that there is an increasing trend in ESG considerations among large-cap companies and public investors, little have been written about the link with private investors. Venture capital and private equity investors have an important role in shaping current innovative companies to become future leaders in the market and therefore posses the ability to influence entrepreneurs towards sustainability by incorporating ESG issues in their investment selection processes. This study sought to find out if venture capital and private equity investors consider ESG issues in their activities and if so, do cultural and institutional contexts in which they operate have any effect on their considerations? We have used two of the most advanced venture capital and private equity industries in the world – USA and UK to analysed the response of this sector to ESG issues. Essential ESG factors have been coded using content analysis method for 122 companies from both countries relating to how they practise and integrate environmental, social and corporate governance issues into their investment decision process. Statistical multivariate analysis was conducted with SPSS to analyse data gathered. Our findings revealed that in general venture capital and private equity investors are responding to calls for ESG considerations in their activities, with almost all studied companies reporting some form of ESG issues on their corporate website. However, majority of them are just at the initial stage of mentioning with little information on how it is been used as part of investment selection criteria. Results of the study also show that, investors in environmental related products and services (Cleantech) have higher levels of ESG considerations than other investors. An indication that investor‟s who finance innovative companies that provide solutions to current environmental problems do impact more positively on society. In addition, findings also confirmed earlier studies that differences in cultural and institutional contexts between countries do affect behaviour and values of companies. Thus, a country with strong regulations and incentives towards sustainability will impact on corporate culture that will increase ESG considerations among venture capital and private equity investors. Therefore, our study concluded that there is an appreciable levels of ESG consideration among venture capital and private equity investor‟s, however investors need to increase their considerations by committing more resources to environmental solutions and social issues such as clean technologies and community philanthropy.

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Rydell, Arvid, and Alexander Leucht. "Looking behind the curtain : Exploring the role and content of ESG in M&A Due Diligence." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-416065.

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Issues surrounding the climate crisis are becoming more visible in society, and as a result, topics concerning sustainability and social responsibility increase in importance. At the same time, global Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity is increasing. Hence, since the opportunities to include sustainability and social responsibility are a part of the world today, they are a part of M&A. Therefore, these aspects need to be considered, and investors are doing so by measuring them with the concept of ESG (Environmental Social Governance). Therefore, ESG criteria are investigated during the Due Diligence process in an M&A. The scientific research within this area is limited. This indicative study was conducted to explore the content and role of ESG in a Due Diligence process in an M&A. The empirical data was collected through a qualitative, multiple-case study investigating Due Diligence cases. Nine semi-structured interviews with investment professionals who participated in 21 Due Diligence cease were carried out and analyzed in three aggregated dimensions of ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance. This study uncovered twelve themes that created a greater understanding of the content of ESG. Investigating ESG in Due Diligence can help to assess risk, identify sources of value, productive capabilities, and support the achievement of long-term objectives. Furthermore, ESG in Due Diligence plays a major role on different levels. Besides enhancing the informative value, ESG adds complexity and cost to the Due Diligence process.

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Sandholm, Louise, and Alexander Höglund. "Vem investerar för en hållbar framtid? : En demografisk studie över svenska investerare." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-353574.

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The recent and well debated topic of sustainable investments together with the contradiction of the typical sustainable individual and the typical investor constitutes the purpose for the empirical research. Secondary shareholder data obtained from the Central Securities Depositary, Euroclear Sweden, together with corporate sustainable ratings from Thomson Reuters contributes to portraying the typical Swedish sustainable investor. Together with previous research we find that women tend to invest more in sustainable companies than men and that a lower income is related to a higher degree of sustainable investments. In conflict with presented theories we state that, based on our sample, investors over age 65 hold more sustainable companies than their younger counterpart. Regarding gender the results show that women invest more in sustainable companies than men.
Hållbara investeringar är ett ämne som fått ett allt större fokus vid investeringsbeslut och påverkan på miljö och social rättvisa är högaktuellt i den vardagliga debatten. Den grupp individer som beskrivs vara intresserade av hållbarhetsfrågor i allmänhet är unga kvinnor. Samtidigt visar tidigare undersökningar att i sammanhanget investerare är den typiske investeraren en man över 50 år. Uppsatsens problemformulering utgår från denna skillnad mellan den hållbara individen och den typiske investeraren för att undersöka vilka investerare som står för investeringar i hållbara företag. De demografiska faktorerna kön, ålder, årsinkomst, portföljvärde och bostadsort används i uppsatsen för att identifiera skillnader mellan hållbara och icke-hållbara investerare. Samt ifall demografiska faktorer har något samband med en investerares grad av hållbarhet. Ägardata för de demografiska faktorerna har baserats på Euroclear Swedens värdepapperscentral. Företagen i urvalet har hållbarhetsklassificerats utifrån Thomson Reuters ESG-score, en betygsättning av företag med hänsyn till deras arbete kring miljö, social och bolagsstyrningspåverkan. Tidigare forskning presenterar demografisk utformning för investerare som tar hänsyn till hur deras placeringar påverkar omvärlden. Enhälligt för tidigare forskning är att det är kvinnor som bryr sig om hållbarhet och investerar socialt ansvarsfullt, samt att unga investerare väljer i större utsträckning hållbarhet jämfört med äldre. För inkomst pekar tidigare forskning inte på en gemensam inkomstklass utan beroende på i vilket land undersökningen är gjord samt på vilken investerartyp den är gjord skiljer sig resultatet åt. Storstadsbor investerar enligt tidigare forskning mer hållbart än övrig befolkning och portföljvärdet för hållbara investerare beskrivs i regel vara lägre än för de icke hållbara. Genom t-test undersöks skillnaden mellan hållbara samt icke-hållbara och genom regressionsanalyser undersöks hur demografiska variabler har en påverkan på graden av hållbarhet i svenska privata aktieportföljer. Undersökningen finner vad gäller skillnaden mellan hållbara och icke-hållbara investerare att variabeln ålder utgör en statistiskt signifikant skillnad mellan de olika investerartyperna. Resultatet talar emot den teoretiska referensramen och visar att investerare över 65 år har högst koncentration i hållbara företag, jämfört med åldersklasserna 18-44 och 45-64. Skillnaden mellan könen tyder även på att kvinnor investerar mer hållbart än män och att hållbara investerare har en lägre genomsnittlig inkomst än de icke hållbara investerarna.

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Correia, Alexandre Diogo Figueira da Silva. "ESG performance, tax avoidance and external financing decisions in Europe." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/20881.

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Mestrado em Finanças
Este estudo pretende analisar se a evasão fiscal afeta o custo de capital das empresas na Europa, tomando em consideração o nível de ESG das empresas. Enquanto que as atividades de planeamento fiscal podem gerar um maior fluxo de caixa depois de impostos, como resultado de um menor pagamento de imposto para os governos, estas podem também levar a resultados futuros incertos e arriscados, o que pode impor vários riscos para as empresas. Particularmente, tomando em atenção a estrutura de capital das empresas, esses riscos podem afetar significativamente as decisões de financiamento por afetarem o custo de capital próprio e o custo de capital alheio. No entanto, temos também que ter em consideração um tema cada vez mais relevante relacionado com a responsabilidade e impacto social das empresas, que pode também ter um papel importante nas decisões de financiamento. Para analisar, recorremos aos ratings de ESG fornecidas pela Thomson Reuters. Testámos se os ratings de ESG podem moldar a relação entre o planeamento fiscal e o custo de capital. Os resultados sugerem que os investidores reagem positivamente a elevadas pontuações de ESG quando investem em empresas que praticam atividades de planeamento fiscal. Esse efeito é especialmente capturado pelas componentes Social e Governança. Este estudo contribui para a literatura existente sobre planeamento fiscal e custo de capital, adicionando um tem não tem sido suficientemente explorado e que pode influenciar a relação dessas duas variáveis e, particularmente, a reação dos investidores.
This paper aims to study whether tax avoidance affects company's cost of capital in Europe, taking into consideration company's level of ESG. While tax avoidance activities may generate a higher after-tax cash-flow as a result of lower cash tax payments to the governments, those outcomes can be uncertain, which could impose several risks. Specifically, looking at firm's capital structure, those risks could significantly affect the firm's financing decisions by affecting both the cost of equity and the cost of debt. However, we also need to take into consideration an increasingly topic related to firm's responsibility and social impact that may also play an important role in financing decisions. We take advantage of the ESG Scores from Thomson Reuters. We test whether ESG performance scores shape the relationship between tax avoidance and cost of capital. Results suggest that investors perceive higher levels of ESG performance positively when investing in firms that engage in tax avoidance activities. The effect is mostly captured by the Social and Governance components. The study contributes to the literature on tax avoidance and cost of capital, adding a topic that is not sufficiently explored and could influence the final relationship between those two variables and, particularly, the investors' reaction.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

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Sjögren, Rasmus, and Jacob Wickström. "A study of ESG's contribution to firm performance : Evidence from the European region." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för industriell ekonomi, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-18271.

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Sustainability is an increasing subject of interest amongst customers, society and corporate leaders. As firms are adapting towards a more sustainable business, opportunities towards a leading position where both long-term corporate social responsibility and financial performance is of interest. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate firm’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rating and its effect on their financial performance. The study is conducted on firms located in the European region. A related purpose is to investigate individual sectors to understand whether this relationship is different depending on the sector characteristics in which the firms operate in. This thesis uses secondary data for several firms over a time-period ranging from 2008-2017. In order to investigate several entities over this time-period, the data was constructed as panel data. To investigate the objective, panel regressions was performed. The compounded dataset, including firms from all sectors, shows that the Environmental rating has statistical significance on financial performance. The individual sectors that shows significance with any of the ESG-rating, indicates an often-negative relationship between ESG and financial performance. This thesis contributes as an ongoing analysis in the field of ESG and financial performance. The understanding from this and future studies assist customers, investors and corporate leaders when choosing to adapt towards more socially responsible activities. Further research in the European region is of interest, continuing investigating positive or negative aspects of ESG and a firm’s financial performance.
Hållbarhet är ett ämne av växande intresse hos både kunder, samhället och företagsledare. När företag anpassar sig till en mer hållbar affärsverksamhet, öppnar sig möjligheter till en ledande position där både långsiktigt socialt ansvarstagande och finansiell prestanda är av intresse. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka företags miljömässiga, sociala och bolags styrande betyg och deras inverkan på deras finansiella prestanda. Studien utförs på företag som är verksamma inom den Europeiska regionen. Ett relaterat syfte är att undersöka enskilda sektorer för att skapa en förståelse om detta samband är annorlunda beroende på karakteristiken av sektorn som företagen verkar inom. Detta examensarbete använder sig av sekundärdata från flera företag under en tidsperiod som sträcker sig från 2008–2017. För att kunna undersöka flera entiteter över denna tidsperiod, konstruerades datan som paneldata. För att undersöka syftet utfördes panelregressioner. I den sammansatta datan, som innehåller företag från alla sektorer, visas det att det miljömässiga betyget har statistisk signifikans för den finansiella prestandan. De enskilda sektorerna som visar signifikans för någon av ESG-betygen, indikerar ett ofta negativt samband mellan ESG och finansiell prestanda. Detta examensarbete bidrar till en pågående analys inom ESG och finansiell prestanda. Förståelsen ifrån denna och framtida studier hjälper kunder, investerare och företagsledare när dem väljer att anpassa sig till mer socialt ansvarstagande aktiviteter. Ytterligare forskning inom den Europeiska regionen av är intresse, fortsättningsvis att undersöka positiva eller negativa aspekter av ESG och företagens finansiella prestanda.

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Johansson, Christoffer, and Petter Lundström. "Finding Value Through Sustainable Performance : A cross-sectional study of the relationship between risk-adjusted return and Environmental, Social and Governance performance on the Indian stock market." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-105684.

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Problem background and discussion: Emerging countries economies are growing substantially; one of these is India which stock market has been one of the best performing in the world in recent years. Analysts are forecasting further development and some claims that India has the most business- and investment-stimulating political leaders in the world. However, stock markets in emerging countries are highly volatile and normally more risky than in developed economies. One approach to emphasise the more common risks in emerging countries are by including Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rating into the fundamental investment model. However, there is a conflict of what previous studies suggest regarding ESG investments. Some argues there is a positive relation and others a negative relation between ESG factors and risk- adjusted return. Research question: “Is there a relation between risk-adjusted return and ESG performance at the Indian stock market?” Objective: The objective is to determine if there is a relationship between ESG performance and risk-adjusted return in India. Another objective is to determine if there is a relationship between ESG performance and risk-adjusted return among companies with high Total ESG rating as well as for companies with low Total ESG rating. Theoretical framework: ESG is an established approach to describe sustainability issues, where screening is a process designed to select those companies that meet ESG criteria. A basic description of Capital Asset Pricing Model CAPM, which calculates an asset's expected return, has been used to calculate risk-adjusted return. Efficient Market Hypothesis EMH is the basic theory of market efficiency and is used to explain any non-linear relationship between ESG factors and risk-adjusted returns. Adaptive Market Hypothesis AMH has been taken into account as it deals with financial behaviour. Method: A quantitative study using a deductive approach has been selected to perform this study. The practical approach is a cross sectional study where the relationship in the Indian market has been analysed and significance-tested during 2014. ESG information for 126 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has been purchased from Sustainalytics, a global leader in research for responsible investment. Empirical findings and analysis: The results of the study demonstrate no significant relationship between Total ESG rating and risk-adjusted return during 2014. In the examination of individual categories, Environmental and Social rating does not have a significant association with the risk-adjusted Return. Though, the results display a negative relationship between Governance rating and risk-adjusted return. This relationship is also obtained among companies in with low Total ESG rating but not companies with high ESG rating. Conclusion: Results implies that investors have not been able to use the information of Total ESG performance to obtain a better risk-adjusted return on the Indian stock market in 2014. However, this can be achieved by using Governance rating.

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Kuiper, Christiaan, and Gálvez Adrián. "The effect of ESG on stock prices : An event study on the S&P 500." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för ekonomistyrning och logistik (ELO), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-95954.

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Abstract Introduction: The effect of Environmental, Social and Governance issues on stock prices is highly debated in literature. Different authors state that ESG has an influence on stock price and company value while others state that it has no or limited effect. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explain the effect of ESG changes on stock prices and add information to the debate between both sides if there is, or if there is not an effect from ESG on stock prices. Research questions: 1. What is the effect of changes in Environmental concerns in stock prices? 2. What is the effect of changes in Social concerns in stock prices? 3.What is the effect of changes in Governance concerns in stock prices? Methodology: Event study method with a sample size of 484 companies from the S&P 500 which will be analyzed for the period of 2015-2017, which gave 1.420 different events. These companies got ratings for Environmental Pillar, Social Pillar, Governance Pillar, ESG Controversies, ESG Score and ESG Combined Score. For each event the abnormal stock returns were compared with the rating changes. The data is taken from EikonThomsonReuters. Conclusion: The results showed no correlation between Environmental, Social and Governance rating changes and abnormal returns. Also, the combined ratings did not show any correlations. Therefore, our study will support and contribute to the side of researcher Friedman (1970), Jacobs et al. (2010), Walley and Whitehead (1994), Drobetz et al. (2004) and other researchers which state there is no correlation between ESG and stock prices. Limitations: The study is based on ratings provided by EIKON, we assumed they are a clear and correct reflection of the actual ESG within companies. The second limitation is the anticipation effect, the response of the stock market is based on unawareness from investors. If the bases where the rating changes on is already known than there is no effect from investors because they already anticipated the decreased rating. There are also a few companies excluded from the research because of missing ratings. Also, these results are based on the S&P500 and therefore do not have to be true for other financial markets. Keywords: ESG, Stock Price, Environmental, Social, Governance, ESG-ratings, S&P 500, Event Study, EIKON

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Garcia, Alexandre Sanches. "Associações entre desempenhos financeiro e socioambiental: um estudo das circunstâncias em que vale a pena ser verde." reponame:Repositório Institucional do FGV, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10438/18261.

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In the last two decades, a growing number of executives have allocated time and resources on business strategy issues that involve corporate social responsibility (LACY; COWER, HAYWARD; NEUBERGER, 2010). Porter and Van der Linde (1995) already affirmed that we are passing through a phase of transition of the industrial history, in which the executives begin to realize investments in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors like an economic and competitive opportunity, instead of cost or threat. But the question that remains nanswered is: when is it worth adopting these socio-environmental strategies? The central objective of this study is to measure the socio-environmental performance of companies and their relationship with economic and financial performance, investigating under what circumstances pays-to-be-green is worth. In this sense and based on the discussions in competitive socio-environmental strategies, such as the Porter Hypothesis and the Natural Resource Based View (NRBV), in addition to the literature on institutional and stakeholder theories, the present study sought to show performance in ESG of companies in various circumstances. Considering the institutional, cultural and regulatory differences between countries, the ESG performance and its relation to the financial performance of companies from emerging and developed countries were investigated. It also investigated whether the company's stock sustainability index results in better performance, ESG and financial, compared to companies not listed in these indexes. Through the ASSET4 database, the panel data methodology was used with 2,165 companies from developed and emerging countries. The results allow us not to reject the hypotheses raised that there is a prevalence of the institutional environment in relation to financial performance and ESG performance, indicating that there is a positive association in the economic-financial performance and ESG of companies only in developed countries. In companies in emerging countries, this relationship is negative. In addition, it has been found that being listed on a stock exchange sustainability index, while bringing better ESG performance to the company, does not cause a reflection on its economic-financial performance. Additionally, it was found that companies belonging to sectors of economic activities considered controversial have better ESG performance than companies from other sectors. These results contribute to the debate on the theme "pays-to-be-green", showing that possible methodological differences used in several academic works explain the contradictory results found so far. The results of this work show that corporate executives and public managers from emerging economies still have a long way to go in pursuing ESG best practices.
Nas últimas duas décadas, um número crescente de executivos tem alocado tempo e recursos em assuntos de estratégia empresarial que envolve a responsabilidade social das organizações (LACY; COOPER; HAYWARD; NEUBERGER, 2010). Porter e Van der Linde (1995) já afirmava que estamos passando uma fase de transição da história industrial, na qual os executivos começam a perceber investimentos em fatores Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) como uma oportunidade econômica e competitiva, ao invés de custo ou ameaça. Mas a pergunta que ainda fica sem resposta é: quando vale a pena adotar essas estratégias socioambientais? O objetivo central desse estudo é a mensuração do desempenho socioambiental das empresas e sua relação com o desempenho econômico-financeiro investigando em que circunstâncias vale a pena ser verde (pays-to-be-green). Nesse sentido e pautado pelas discussões em estratégias socioambientais competitivas, como a Hipótese de Porter e a Natural Resource Based View (NRBV), além da literatura das teorias institucional e do stakeholder, o presente estudo buscou mostrar o desempenho ESG das empresas em diversas circunstâncias. Considerando as diferenças institucional, cultural e regulamentar entre países, foram investigados os desempenhos ESG e sua relação com o desempenho financeiro das empresas pertencentes a países emergentes e de países desenvolvidos. Também investigou se o fato da empresa pertencer a índices de sustentabilidade de bolsas de valores resulta em melhores desempenhos, ESG e financeiro, comparados às empresas não listadas nesses índices. Por meio do banco de dados ASSET4, foi utilizada a metodologia de dados em painel com 2.165 empresas de países desenvolvidos e de países emergentes. Os resultados permitem não rejeitar as hipóteses levantadas de que há prevalência do ambiente institucional na relação desempenho financeiro e desempenho ESG, indicando que há associação positiva no desempenho econômico-financeiro e ESG das empresas somente dos países desenvolvidos. Já nas empresas de países emergentes essa relação é negativa. Além disso, verificou-se que estar listada em índice de sustentabilidade de bolsas de valores, embora gere melhor desempenho ESG para a empresa, não causa reflexo no seu desempenho econômico-financeiro. Adicionalmente, foi constatado que empresas pertencentes a setores de atividades econômicas consideradas polêmicas possuem melhor desempenho ESG do que empresas dos outros setores. Tais resultados contribuem para o debate do tema “pays-to-be-green”, mostrando que possíveis diferenças metodológicas utilizadas em diversos trabalhos acadêmicos explicam os resultados contraditórios até então encontrados. Os resultados desse trabalho mostram que os executivos das empresas e gestores públicos de países de economia emergente ainda tem um longo caminho a percorrer na buscar por melhores práticas ESG.

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Kjellberg, Annie, and Fleur Linssen. "How Non-Financial Environmental And Social Factors Influence An Impact Investors Decision To Invest." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-447214.

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With a growing risk of food insecurity in the face of extreme population growth, the world is in need of hands-on solutions that could combine a significant increase in food production while decreasing the effects of agriculture on the environment. Such a solution could be provided through cultivating staple crops in Indoor Vertical Farming facilities, however, due to its high expenses, these developments have stagnated, lacking financial support. As this financial support could be provided by Impact Investors, this thesis explores the relevance of non-financial factors and how they relate to the financial returns as well as how much it influences an Impact Investors decision to invest. The primary data was collected through a quantitative survey, including a fictional scenario based upon the cultivation of wheat in an Indoor Vertical Farming. The results were analyzed and interpreted through the lens of the Willingness to Pay concept and the Rational Choice Theory.The results showed that in the case of this study, the respondents were most willing to pay for the factors water, yield, and emissions. However, regardless of the positive impact of these factors, they lacked the influence to get them to commit to the presented scenario as they still prioritized financial returns as the base of decision. Lastly, another prominent driver behind the investors likelihood to invest was found to be age, where younger investors were much more likely to invest than the older respondents.
Med en ökande risk för livsmedelsosäkerhet parallellt med extrem befolkningstillväxt behöver världen praktiska lösningar som kan kombinera en betydande ökning av livsmedelsproduktionen utan ökad belastning på miljön från intensifierat jordbruk. En sådan lösning kan tillhandahållas genom odling av stapelgrödor i vertikala jordbruksanläggningar inomhus, men på grund av dess höga kostnader blir denna utveckling stagnerad på grund av saknat ekonomiskt stöd. I och med att en möjlig väg att säkra ekonomiska stöd kan tillhandahållas av Impact Investors undersöker denna avhandling relevansen av icke-finansiella faktorer och hur de relaterar till den finansiella avkastningen samt hur mycket det påverkar ett Impact Investors beslut att investera. De primära uppgifterna samlades in genom en kvantitativ enkätundersökning, baserat på ett fiktivt scenario om odling av vete i ett vertikalt jordbruk inomhus. Resultaten analyserades och tolkades genom perspektiven 'Willingness to Pay' och 'Rational Choice Theory'. Resultaten visade att respondenterna i den här studien var mest villiga att betala för faktorerna vatten, avkastning och utsläpp. Oavsett de positiva effekterna av dessa faktorer saknade de dock tillräckligt inflytande för att få investerarna att helt engagera sig i det presenterade scenariot eftersom de fortfarande prioriterade ekonomisk avkastning som främsta beslutsunderlag. Slutligen visade sig att en annan framstående drivkraft bakom investerarnas sannolikhet att investera var ålder, där yngre investerare var mycket mer benägna att investera än de äldre respondenterna.

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Andersson, Pontus, and John Eskilson. "Hållbara fonders avkastning : En kvantitativ studie om en jämförelse av riskjusterad avkastning för svenska fonder baserat på ESG-score." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk och industriell utveckling, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-177754.

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Background: The Swedish fund savings have developed strongly over the past two decades. Together with this development, the knowledge that the earth's population is facing an extensive climate challenge has also increased. For many people today, living sustainably has become a central aspect of everyday life, and when it comes to investing their savings, the majority of Sweden's fund savers state that sustainability is something that is taken into account when choosing an investment. Investments in funds that based on measuring tools, show a high degree of sustainability have thus increased. This raises the question of whether these sustainable funds can generate a higher alpha and thus a better risk-adjusted return than the less sustainable alternatives available on the market. Previous studies have shown differences of opinion, which means that it is relevant to examine how these different types of funds perform against each other in the Swedish market. Purpose: The aim of this study is to analyze whether fund savers that are investing in sustainable funds can generate a higher alpha and thereby a better risk adjusted return than fund savers that invests in less sustainable alternatives. Methodology: The study was conducted with a quantitative method and a deductive approach. Sustainability ratings have been collected for 253 funds from a measuring institute. For these 253 funds, data in the form of net asset value have been collected between the period 2016 - 2020 monthly. These funds have then been evaluated based on risk-adjusted returns where regression analysis has been the groundwork for finding answers to whether alpha has been achieved compared to the market or not. Results obtained have then been statistically examined through various tests. Conclusion: After completed study, there were no signs that studied sustainable funds have given rise to a better risk-adjusted return than the less sustainable alternatives available on the market. Of the 253 funds included in the study, only five funds showed a risk-adjusted return statistically different from zero, where three had a negative return and two a positive return. When the 253 funds were divided into four different quartiles based on sustainability ratings, it appeared that the funds with a positive risk-adjusted return were placed in quartile four, which was the one with the highest sustainability rating. However, this may be based on chance and a result of two in a sample of 253 gives clear indications that efficiency prevails in the market.

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Johansson, Nicklas. "Hållbarhetsprestationer och bolagsskatt: Komplement eller substitut? : En kvantitativ studie om publika europeiska bolag." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Företagsekonomi, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-26034.

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SAMMANFATTNING Titel: Hållbarhetsprestationer och bolagsskatt: Komplement eller substitut? - En kvantitativ studie om publika europeiska bolag Nivå: C-uppsats i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Nicklas Johansson Handledare: Jan Svanberg Datum: 2017 - Januari Syfte: Företagens sociala ansvar (CSR) är en viktig fråga för många av företagets intressenter, inte minst samhället. Hur företag betraktar bolagsskatt som en del av detta ansvar är därmed en betydelsefull fråga då statens skatteintäkter bidrar till välfärden i samhället. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka sambandet mellan CSR och europeiska bolags effektiva skattesats, dels utifrån total CSR-prestation samt utifrån dimensioner av CSR. Metod: Studien utgår från en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi och en deduktiv ansats. Studien har vidare en kvantitativ strategi och en longitudinell design för att samla in sekundärdata från Thomson Reuters databas Datastream för åren 2011-2016. Urvalet består av 465 publika europeiska företag för vilka data analyserats med multipla regressionsanalyser i statistikprogrammet IBM SPSS. Resultat & slutsats: Studiens resultat indikerar ett negativt samband mellan total CSR-prestation och bolagsskatt, men att detta samband drivs av att CSR-aktiviteter inom miljödimensionen har en starkare negativ inverkan än den positiva inverkan som CSR-aktiviteter inom den sociala dimensionen bidrar med. Slutsatsen därav är att CSR och bolagsskatt både kan utgöra substitut och komplement till varandra. CSR-aktiviteter inom miljödimensionen används som substitut till bolagsskatt medan bolagsskatt betraktas som ett komplement till CSR inom den sociala dimensionen. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Då sambanden visat sig skilja sig åt mellan olika dimensioner bör framtida forskning inte utgå från ett samlat mått på CSR utan gå in mer i detalj på de kategorier och indikatorer som bygger upp dimensionerna. Det kan också finnas skillnader mellan industrier och land, varför det vore intressant med studier som undersöker sambandet inom respektive industritillhörighet och land i Europa. Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar till att fylla forskningsgapet som existerat för europeiska bolag om sambandet mellan CSR och bolagsskatt samt till att undersöka sambandet på dimensionsnivå av CSR. Studien bidrar också till teorin om CSR och bolagsskatt som substitut, komplement eller oberoende aktiviteter. Slutligen kan studien öka förståelsen för hur bolags CSR- och skattebeteende hänger ihop hos myndigheter och organisationer som arbetar med lagstiftning och upprättandet av riktlinjer för hållbarhetsredovisning. Nyckelord: CSR, ETR, ESG, socialt ansvar, hållbarhetsarbete, bolagsskatt, skattebetalningar, miljödimension, social dimension och företagsstyrningsdimension.
ABSTRACT Title: Sustainability performance and corporate tax: Complement or substitute? - A quantitative study of public European companies Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Nicklas Johansson Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Date: 2017 - January Aim: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an important issue for many of the company's stakeholders, not least society. How companies regard corporate tax as part of this responsibility is therefore an important issue as the state's tax revenues contribute to the welfare of society. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between CSR and European companies' effective tax rate, partly based on total CSR performance as well as dimensions of CSR. Method: The study is based on a positivistic research philosophy and a deductive approach. The study also has a quantitative strategy and a longitudinal design for collecting secondary data from the Thomson Reuters database Datastream for the years 2011-2016. The sample consists of 465 public European companies for which data were analyzed by multiple regression analyzes in the IBM SPSS statistics program. Result & conclusions: The study's results indicate a negative relationship between total CSR performance and corporate tax, but this connection is driven by the stronger impact of CSR activities in the environmental dimension relative to the positive impact of CSR activities in the social dimension. The conclusion is that CSR and corporate tax can both be substitutes and complementary to each other. CSR activities within the environmental dimension are used as substitutes for corporate tax while corporate tax is considered as a complement to CSR in the social dimension. Suggestions for future research: When the relationships were found to differ between different dimensions, future research should not be based on a single measure of CSR, but go into more detail on the categories and indicators that build the dimensions. There may also be differences between industries and countries, so it would be interesting with studies that examine the relationship within each industry and country in Europe. Contribution of the thesis: The study contributes to filling the gap of research that exists for European companies on the relationship between CSR and corporate taxation and to investigate the relationship at the dimensional level of CSR. The study also contributes to the theory of CSR and corporate taxation as substitutes, complements or independent activities. Finally, the study can increase understanding of how companies' CSR and tax behavior relate to government agencies and organizations involved in legislation and the establishment of guidelines for sustainability reporting. Keywords: ETR, Corporate Tax, Tax Payments, CSR, ESG, Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Environmental Dimension, Social Dimension and Corporate Governance Dimension.

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Cziszewska, Anna, and Michelle Karlsson. "Hållbarhetsredovisning inom banksektorn : En kvalitativ studie om utvecklingen av innehållet i den svenska banksektorns hållbarhetsrapportering." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Företagsekonomi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-40979.

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Background: Sustainable development is a phenomenon that has become increasingly important as a result of the shift in values of today’s society. Because of this increase in awareness of sustainability, organizations have parallelly increased their reporting in this area in order to enable investors, customers and other stakeholders to make decisions. From a global perspective, the sustainability reporting in different countries has become harmonized to an increasing extent. This harmonization process occurs not only in a global context, but also within the same industry. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how organizations operating in the same industry are framing and developing their sustainability reporting over time. Methods: In order to answer the research questions, a comparative study was conducted. The entirety of the empirical material has been collected using a qualitative content analysis, consisting of nine organizations' annual and sustainability reports during the years 2014-2019. The content of the reports has been analyzed in context of three main aspects: environmental, social and governance. Conclusions: The results of this study show that there are a number of similarities and common patterns in the sustainability reporting of organizations operating in the same industry. The results show that organizations operating in the same industry are becoming more and more harmonized in terms of the content of sustainability reporting.
Bakgrund: I takt med förändrade samhällsvärderingar och ett ökat intresse gentemot miljöfrågor, har begreppet hållbar utveckling kommit att spela en allt större roll. Efterfrågan på information gällande hållbarhet har ökat i takt med ett flertal olika händelser i form av dels företagsskandaler och börsfall, dels påtryckningar från investerare och politiker. Detta har resulterat i att företag har utvecklat sin rapportering gällande hållbarhet för att investerare, kunder, lagstiftare och andra intressenter ska kunna fatta relevanta beslut. Rapporteringen av företagens hållbarhetsarbete har till följd av detta fått en allt större roll där det har blivit alltmer vanligt förekommande att större företag presenterar detta i en så kallad hållbarhetsrapport. Sett ur ett globalt perspektiv, har olika länders hållbarhetsarbete harmoniserats i allt större utsträckning. Denna harmoniseringsprocess går inte endast att utläsa ur ett globalt perspektiv, utan även inom samma bransch. Syfte: Studien syftar till att undersöka hur hållbarhetsrapporteringen hos organisationer verksamma inom samma bransch utformar sig och hur detta har utvecklats över tid. Metod: Studien följer en komparativ design och har genomförts med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys bestående av nio organisationers års- och hållbarhetsredovisningar mellan åren 2014–2019. Innehållet i års- och hållbarhetsredovisningar har analyserats utifrån tre teman: miljö, socialt ansvar och bolagsstyrning. Slutsatser: Studien visar att det föreligger ett flertal likheter och gemensamma mönster i hållbarhetsrapporteringen hos organisationer verksamma inom samma bransch. Studiens resultat visar på att organisationer verksamma inom samma bransch blir alltmer harmoniserade sett till innehållet i hållbarhetsrapporteringen.

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Johannesson, Gustav, and Martin Westport. "Sambandet mellan Corporate Social Performance och finansiell risk : - En kvantitativ studie som undersöker nordiska företag." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för ekonomistyrning och logistik (ELO), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-75421.

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Examensarbete, Civilekonomprogrammet, Ekonomihögskolan vid Linnéuniversitetet Författare: Gustav Johannesson och Martin Westport Handledare: Andreas Stephan Medbedömare: Anna Stafsudd Titel: Sambandet mellan Corporate Social Performance och finansiell risk - En kvantitativ studie som undersöker nordiska företag Bakgrund: Företags sociala ansvar har ständigt funnits på företagsagendan under senaste åren efter ökade globala utmaningar och större påtryckningar från intressenter. Man kan se allt större risker som är kopplade till företags hållbarhetsarbete. Med bakgrund till detta finns det ett stort intresse och en uppåtgående trend kring hållbara investeringar där Norden är ledande inom området. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att förklara sambandet mellan Corporate Social Performance, både på en sammanslagen och individuell nivå, och finansiell risk. Metod: Genom den deduktiva forskningsansatsen och den kvantitativa forskningsstrategin som är baserad på paneldata testar författarna sina hypoteser. Författarna bygger sina hypoteser på intressentteorin och riskhanteringsteorin som testas med ett nordiskt urval på 144 företag under tidsperioden 2002-2016. Slutsats: Studiens resultat visar att det finns ett negativt samband mellan Corporate Social Performance och finansiell risk. Det finns även ett negativt samband mellan företags sociala prestationer och finansiell risk. Detta är i linje med författarnas förväntningar. Däremot visar resultatet inga samband mellan företags miljömässiga och styrningsmässiga prestationer och deras finansiella risk.
Degree Project, The Business Administration and Economics Programme, School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University Authors: Gustav Johannesson and Martin Westport Supervisor: Andreas Stephan Co-assessor: Anna Stafsudd Title: The relationship between Corporate Social Performance and Financial Risk - A quantitative study that examines Nordic companies Background: Corporate Social Responsibility has been on the corporate agenda in recent years following increased global challenges and greater pressure from stakeholders. One can see more risks associated with corporate sustainability. This has led to a great interest globally and an upward trend in Socially Responsible Investing where the Nordic region is at the leading edge. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explain the relationship between Corporate Social Performance, both at a combined and an individual level, and financial risk. Method: Through the deductive research approach and the quantitative research strategy that is based on panel data, the authors test their hypotheses. The authors base their hypotheses on stakeholder theory and risk management theory and test them with a Nordic sample of 144 companies over the period 2002-2016. Conclusion: The study results show that there is a negative relationship between Corporate Social Performance and financial risk. There is also a negative relationship between social performance and financial risk. This is in line with the authors’ expectations. However, the results show no relationship between companies’ environmental and governance performance and their financial risk.

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Sakuma, Kyoko. "Conformance and non conformance of asset managers to the environment, social and governance pressures: sensemaking capacities and the use of externally defined information." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209675.

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This thesis focuses on a central behavioral paradox in the asset management community. Recent decades have brought an upsurge in initiatives throughout the investment community to voluntarily integrate sustainability issues into investment decisions. The financial crisis has however revealed behavioral inconsistency and deepening irresponsibility. Today, sustainable investments represent USD 10.7 trillion, or 7% of the entire market, of assets under management and it is growing steadily.

One important driver of this growth was the emergence of specialized research agencies that standardized measurement of companies’ environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance and sold such information as a tool to evaluate or pressure corporate conducts. More recently, sell-side research, financial news, and market-index providers joined the ESG information market, where they aim to support more mainstream asset managers in integrating ESG information into investment decisions.

A dominant assumption has taken hold in a large part of the investment and regulatory circles: asset managers’ use of ESG information will induce a behavioral change so that they automatically integrate companies’ sustainability to investment return concerns. Understandings of what constitutes sustainable investment have been largely practitioner-driven. The academic community took little interest to challenge the assumption. Remarkably, more scholars have come to assume that conformance to institutional pressures to add ESG information to investment strategies will induce more sustainable and long-term behavior of investors and companies. ESG information integration is believed to be a behavioral enabler for mainstream investors to systematically embed sustainability in investment strategies. Because of the assumption, theory building of asset manager intrinsic motivations to engage in sustainable investment remains unexplored. Main contribution of this research is to generate a deep theoretical understanding of asset manager non-conformance to the ESG pressure to engage in sustainable investment.

The research starts by questioning the dominant assumptions made in the sustainable investment field. While working in the industry, I witnessed some asset managers’ practices of replacing the externally defined ESG information with their own research based on narratives to better understand investee companies. The research question came out of this experience: why do some asset managers use ESG information to engage in sustainable investment while others do not? Do pressures to integrate ESG information really induce more sustainable behaviors on the part of asset managers? These self-inquiries led to a wide array of literature review to search for conformance and non-conformance drivers. Surprisingly, non-conformance was an under-researched theme. Given the scarcity of the research, I sought a method that would enable grounded theorizing based on asset managers’ own experience and interpretations.

Grounded theory research draws on asset manager interviews, archival documents, expert and practitioner consultations and feedback during 2007 and mid-2011. To reflect the global nature of sustainability, I focused on global equity asset managers working in thirteen institutions in three lead markets with most geographically diversified sustainable investment, UK, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Theory building from the ground up does not happen in vacuum. I developed a framework to study conformance and non-conformance drivers to facilitate the concept elicitation. The question of conformance and non-conformance has been studied by institutional, resource-based view of the firm, behavioral finance, cognitive and sensemaking theorists but in a disintegrated manner. I enhanced insights by way of aggregating and exploring the drivers. The framework illuminates the viability of both conformers and non-conformers in sustainable investment practices. Both are leadership activities of asset managers based respectively on explicit and implicit motivations. It illustrates short-term and opportunistic motivations of conforming managers, as opposed to long-term and substantial motivations of non-conforming managers to integrate sustainability and return-making in their investment decisions.

The research results presented hereafter provide a significant theoretical and empirical contribution. Drawing from insights and perspectives from the practitioners, a grounded theory model of asset manager conformance and non-conformance highlights a pivotal concept of sensemaking capacities. It reveals a counter intuitive pattern of asset manager learning. Non-conforming asset managers have developed a distinctive capacity to integrate sustainability and investment return concerns regardless of public pressures to do so. This distinctive sensemaking capacity, founded on behavioral integration of external expectations with own motivation, goal, competence and know-how, was the strategic resource for the organization. Their behavioral integration of sustainability and return generation is so highly developed, that adding the ESG information in their investment strategy would actually impair their capacity to make sense of sustainability. Indeed, I find that non-conforming asset manager teams have sustained consistent returns and increased client assets throughout the financial crisis. In absence of such behavioral integration and sensemaking capacities, conforming managers failed to sustain consistency or suffered from under-funding. To stay competitive, the latter managers have fervently demonstrated the ESG information use in their investment strategies. However, such explicit demonstration of leadership has not been accompanied by distinctive sensemaking capacities. I find that conforming managers were less capable of integrating sustainability and return-generation, which subsequently reinforced their short-termism and opportunism.

The finding of this thesis points to the importance of ‘behavioral integration’ instead of ‘explicit conformance’ of asset managers. The academic community may need to shed a more critical eye on ESG integration by asset managers. Institutional pressures to adopt such information may not induce more sustainable behavior, as ESG know-how is likely to deprive a chance to develop distinctive sensemaking capacities. Furthermore, it may even hurt the sensemaking capacities of managers who have behaviorally integrated sustainability and return-generation. While I hope to trigger a re-think amongst academics how to promote sustainable investment, my findings has theoretical and empirical contributions. The most important theoretical contribution is identification of non-conformance variables to engage intrinsically in sustainable investment. Empirical evidence on non-conformers, corroborated with resource-based view of the firm, also enhances the understanding of non-conformers’ motivation to sustain competitive advantage.

Findings also lead to managerial and policy implications. I carried out this research in the midst of the financial crisis, a time of mounting European policy debates how to build investor capacity to induce long-term and sustainable behaviors. The European Commission’s Internal Market Directorate-General is set to publish a directive proposal that mandate ESG information disclosure to companies and ESG reporting by investors. This adds weight to already published procedural measures to strengthen corporate governance at financial institutions. These policy initiatives emerged largely because of expert consultation and anecdotal evidences. In addition to recommendations to specific pieces of legislative proposals, this research makes an overarching policy proposal. The EU Commission needs to reexamine if the current policy measures lead to further symbolic demonstrations of ESG usage without accompanying sustainable behavior at the cost of real economy. EU equally needs to pay more attention to non-conforming asset managers’ distinctive capacities and enabling mechanisms. Reporting burdens may inadvertently impair non-conforming managers’ capacities to sustain long-term performance and may induce a contradictory policy consequence of increased public distrust.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Blume, Lina, and Melinda Svensson. "E, S eller G : Vilket kriterium har störst betydelse förriskjusterad avkastning?" Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk och industriell utveckling, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-177674.

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Bakgrund: Historiskt har många faktorer spelat roll för investerare vid val av investering, framförallt betydande har varit faktorerna finansiell prestation och finansiella prognoser. Under de senaste åren har en rad nya faktorer tagit mer plats och ESG-faktorer har blivit några av de viktigaste aspekterna, både för investerare och andra intressenter. ESG står för Environmental, Social och Governance och är ett mått på investeringens hållbarhet. Även om det ofta diskuteras om ESG som ett helhetsbetyg, så är det mer sällan man diskuterar varje kriterium var för sig. I denna studie har E, S och G separerats för att undersöka om det är hållbarhet inom ett visst område som är mer gynnsamt än ett annat för att uppnå högst riskjusterad avkastning. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilket kriterium av E, S och G som genererar högst riskjusterad avkastning på OMXSPI. Metod: Studien har en deduktiv forskningsansats och grundas på en kvantitativ undersökningsmetod. All data har inhämtats från Refinitiv Eikon och man har sedan använt statistiska metoder och skapat regressionsanalyser för att undersöka variablernas samband. Variabeln som används för att mäta riskjusterad avkastning är sharpekvoten. Slutsats: Resultatet av denna studie visar att det finns ett statistiskt säkerställt positivt samband mellan betyget för S året 2018 och riskjusterad avkastning. Resterande år och kriterium finns det både positiva och negativa samband, men inget av dessa är signifikanta.
Background: Historically, many factors have played a role for investors when making decisions about an investment, especially significant have been the factors regarding financial performance and financial forecasts. In recent years, a number of new factors have become important, such as ESG factors. Those have become some of the most important aspects, both for investors and other stakeholders. ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and is a measure of the sustainability of an investment. Although ESG often is discussed as an overall rating, it is less common to discuss each criterion separately. In this study, E, S and G have been separated to investigate whether sustainability focus in one specific area is more favorable than another to achieve the highest risk-adjusted return. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate which criterion of E, S and G that generates the highest risk-adjusted return on OMXSPI. Methodology: The study has a deductive research approach and is based on a quantitative research method. All data were obtained from Refinitiv Eikon and statistical methods with regression analysis were created to investigate the relationship of the variables. The variable used to measure risk-adjusted return is the sharpe ratio. Conclusion: The results of this study show that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the grade for S year 2018 and risk-adjusted return. The remaining years and criteria have both positive and negative relationships, but none of these are significant.

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Tapper, Matilda, and Linda Tufvesson. "Finns det ett samband mellan CSR och lånens löptid? : En kvantitativ studie på 300 publika europeiska bolag mellan 2008 - 2016." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för ekonomi, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-27188.

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Titel: Finns det ett samband mellan CSR och lånens löptid? - En kvantitativ studie på 300 publika bolag mellan 2008 - 2016 Nivå: Examensarbete på Grundnivå (kandidatexamen) i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Matilda Tapper och Linda Tufvesson Handledare: Jan Svanberg Datum: 2018 – Maj Syfte: Företagens sociala ansvarstagande blir en allt viktigare fråga, inte minst för intressenter och långivare vid bedömning av företagsrisken och kreditrisken. Många forskare har studerat hur CSR påverkar ett företags kapitalstruktur och vi vet därför att CSR påverkar företagens möjlighet att ta kortfristiga lån eftersom socialt ansvarstagande företag har en lägre finansiell risk. Syftet med den här studien är därför att undersöka om CSR påverkar ett företags val mellan lång- och kortfristigalån. Metod: Studien utgår från en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi och har en hypotetisk-deduktiv ansats. Studien har en kvantitativ strategi och tidsperspektivet består av en longitudinell design som genomförts med sekundärdata från Thomson Reuters databas Datastream med data för åren 2008 - 2016. Urvalet består av 300 publika europeiska bolag för vilka data har analyserats med multipla regressionsanalyser i statistikprogrammet IBM SPSS. Resultat & Slutsats: Resultatet indikerar på att det inte föreligger något samband mellan total CSR och lånens löptid, vilket troligtvis drivs av att miljödimensionen antar ett negativt samband som är lika starkt som företagsstyrningsdimensionens positiva samband. Studiens resultat visar inte heller på något samband mellan den sociala dimensionen och lånens löptid. Slutsatsen är därför att inget samband föreligger mellan total CSR och lånens löptid. CSR-aktiviteter inom miljödimensionen anses vara det som främst ligger i intressenternas intressen. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Då det i studien visat sig att sambanden skiljer sig åt mellan de olika dimensionerna bör framtida forskning se till varje enskild dimension och se mer till de kategorier och indikationer som underbygger dessa dimensioner. Vi föreslår även att en liknande studie genomförs, med en löptid på tre år istället för ett år som definition på långfristiga skulder, för att ge underlag för jämförelser mellan Europa och USA. Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar till att fylla det forskningsgap som finns för europeiska bolag gällande sambandet mellan CSR och lånens löptid samt till att undersöka sambandet mellan varje enskild dimension och lånens löptid.Studien bidrar också till teorin gällande att användningen av eget kapital inte bara påverkas av sociala aktiviteter, utan även av total CSR. Det praktiska bidraget är i form av bevis på att företag kan påverka kostnaden för eget kapital genom CSR och därmed ett företags ekonomi som helhet.
Title: Is there a relationship between CSR and debt maturity? - A quantitative study of 300 public European companies between 2008 - 2016 Level: Student thesis, final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Matilda Tapper and Linda Tufvesson Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Date: 2018 – May Aim: Corporate social responsibility becomes an increasingly important issue, not least for stakeholders and lenders in assessing corporate risk and credit risk. Many researchers have studied how CSR affects the capital structure of a company and we know that CSR affects companies' ability use short-term debt because socially responsible companies have a lower financial risk. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate whether CSR affects a company's choice between long-term and short-term debt. Method: The study assumes a positivistic research philosophy and has a hypothetical- deductible approach. The study has a quantitative strategy and the time perspective consists of a longitudinal design, implemented with secondary data from Thomson Reuters database Datastream with data from the years 2008 - 2016.The sample consists of 300 public European companies for which data were analyzed by multiple regression analyzes in the IBM SPSS statistics program. Result & Conclusion: The results indicates that there is no correlation between total CSR and debt maturity, which is probably driven by the environmental dimension assuming a negative relationship that is as strong as the positive relationship with the corporate governance dimension. The result of the study also shows no correlation between the social dimension and debt maturity. The conclusion is therefore that there is no correlation between total CSR and debt maturity. CSR-activities within the environmental dimension are considered to be the main interests of stakeholders. Suggestions for future research: As the study showed that the relationships differ between the different dimensions, future research should address each individual dimension and look more at the categories and indications that support these dimensions. We also suggest that a similar study may be conducted, with a debt maturity of three years instead of one year as the definition of long-term debts, to provide basis for comparisons between Europe and the United States. Contribution of the thesis: The study contributes to filling the gap of research that exists for European companies regarding the relationship between CSR and debt maturity, as well as investigating the relationship between each individual dimension and debt maturity. The study also contributes to the theory that the use of equity is not only influenced by social activities but also by total CSR. Also, a practical contribution in the form of evidence that companies can influence the cost of equity through CSR and thus a company´s economy as a whole.

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Gunnari, Alexander, and Andreas Larsson. "Tar nya bolag lika stort ansvar för miljö och samhället som etablerade bolag? : En kvantitativ studie av sambandet mellan CSR och nyintroduktioner jämfört med etablerade bolag." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för ekonomi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-32815.

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Title: Do new companies take the same responsibility for our environment and community as established companies? A quantitative study of the connection between CSR and initial public offerings compared to established companies. Level: Student thesis, final assignment for Bachelor´s Degree in Business Administration Author: Alexander Gunnari and Andreas Larsson Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Date: 2020 – May Aim: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) have the past decades increased to meet expectations and demands of both the company’s stakeholders and the community at large. During the 2000s until today we have seen an increasing number of companies that seeks capital by an initial public offering on a stock exchange. Do these new listed companies take as much responsibilities as older more established companies? The aim is to investigate the connection between CSR and time on stock exchange for listed companies in the EU. Further will the connections between the three dimensions of CSR, environment, social and governance be investigated separately against listed time on the stock market. Method: The study is based on a positivistic research philosophy and a hypothetico-deductive approach. The study has designed four hypothesis that undergo an empirical review. Secondary data is collected from the database Thomson Reuters Datastream to answer these hypotheses. The sample consist of 478 publicly traded companies in the EU. The statistical software platform SPSS have been used to analyze the sample. Result & Conclusions: The study gives proof of the hypothesis that CSR measured as ESG score, social and environmental have a positive connection with the company's time on a stock exchange. The longer a company has been listed on a stock exchange the higher the scores are to be expected. The fourth hypothesis, m governance, does not show statistic significance against listed time. The conclusion is that a company´s listed time have a positive impact on CSR. Contribution of the thesis: This study provides evidence for that the longer a company have been listed on a stock exchange, the more work is to be expected in CSR, which leads to higher ESG score. The contribution can be of use in both practical and theoretical ways for several stakeholders and enables these to see indications in cases where something does not seem right. Suggestions for future research: This study opens for continued research in many aspects. There are notable differences in for instance the sectors and countries. Maybe a more hands-on approach to qualitative investigate CSR and the initial public offering with its prospects. Key words: CSR, ESG, Initial public offering, Time perspective, Sustainability, Social dimension, Environmental dimension and Governance dimension.
Titel: Tar nya bolag lika stort ansvar för miljö och samhället som etablerade bolag? En kvantitativ studie av sambandet mellan CSR och nyintroduktioner jämfört med etablerade bolag. Nivå: Examensarbete på Grundnivå (kandidatexamen) i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Alexander Gunnari och Andreas Larsson Handledare: Jan Svanberg Datum: 2020 - maj Syfte: Företags samhällsansvar och sociala ansvarstagande (CSR) har de senaste årtiondena ökat för att möta förväntningar och krav som finns bland både företagets intressenter och samhället i stort. Under 2000-talet fram till idag har antalet företag som söker sig till börsen genom nyintroduktion ökat jämfört med tidigare. Tar dessa nya börsbolag ansvar likt äldre och mer etablerade bolag? Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka sambandet mellan CSR och tid på börsen för börsnoterade bolag inom EU. Dessutom undersöks sambanden mellan de tre dimensionerna av CSR, miljö, social och bolagsstyrning var för sig med tid på börsen. Metod: Studien utgår från en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi med en hypotetisk-deduktiv ansats. Studien utformar fyra hypoteser som genomgår en empirisk granskning. Sekundärdata för att besvara hypoteser är inhämtad från databasen Thomson Reuters Datastream och består av 478 publika börsbolag inom EU. Statistikprogrammet SPSS används sedan för att analysera materialet. Resultat & slutsats: Studien besvarar och ger bevis för hypoteserna om att CSR mätt som ESG score och miljödimensionen samt den sociala dimensionen har ett positivt samband med företags tid på börsen stämmer. Ju längre ett bolag har varit på börsen desto högre poäng förväntas i dessa kategorier. Studiens fjärde hypotes om dimensionen bolagsstyrning visar inte på statistisk signifikans i sambandet mot företags tid på börsen. Studiens slutsats av resultatet är att företagens tid på börsen har en positiv påverkan på CSR. Examensarbetets bidrag: Studien bidrar till att ge bevis om att ju längre ett bolag har varit på börsen desto större arbete inom CSR förväntas, vilket leder till högre ESG poäng. Bidraget kan vara till både praktisk och teoretisk nytta för en rad intressenter och möjliggöra för dessa att se indikationer på att något inte står rätt till. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Studien öppnar upp för fortsatt forskning inom en rad aspekter. Studien noterar skillnader inom bland annat sektorer och länder. En öppning ses mot att mer handfast och kvalitativt undersöka CSR och nyintroduktioner med dess prospekt. Alternativt att göra en liknande studie på andra finansiella marknader än Europa. Nyckelord: CSR, ESG, Nyintroduktion (IPO), Greenwashing, Tidsperspektiv, Hållbarhetsarbete, Social dimension, Miljödimension och Bolagsstyrningsdimension.

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Orlando, Ricardo Silveira. "A gestão compartilhada em áreas de proteção ambiental : a experiência do conselho gestor das Apas Cabreúva, Cajamar e Jundiaí-SP /." Araraquara : [s.n.], 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/106239.

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Orientador: Maria Teresa Miceli Kerbauy
Banca: Maria Cristina de Senzi Zancul
Banca: Darlene Aparecida de Oliveira Ferreira
Banca: Norma Felicidade Lopes da Silva Valencio
Banca: Rodrigo Constante Martins
Resumo: Apesar da maior relevância adquirida nas últimas décadas, o debate ambiental global promovido nas grandes conferências patrocinadas pelas Nações Unidas tem encontrado dificuldades para se transformar em ações concretas para a sustentabilidade. Contudo, contribuiu, nos níveis mais locais, para a criação de novos arranjos institucionais e novas formas de planejamento cuja tônica é a participação, a democratização e a descentralização dos processos políticos como requisitos à sustentabilidade - o que chamaremos nesse trabalho de "governança ambiental". A ideia que norteia este trabalho é a de que o envolvimento e a participação democrática dos atores sociais são fundamentais para incorporar maior legitimidade e eficiência às políticas públicas, especialmente àquelas que se relacionam com a temática ambiental, deslocando o eixo das discussões e da tomada de decisões de um aparato estatal-tecnocrata para espaços socialmente mais representativos. Assim, o alcance do planejamento e das políticas ambientais dependeria da qualidade da interação e das sinergias entre os representantes do Estado e a sociedade civil - a formação e os efeitos dos estoques de capital social. A participação dos atores sociais, propondo parcerias na gestão pública, pode contribuir para uma discussão mais democrática e propositiva com o Estado. Através de um estudo de caso sobre o Conselho Gestor das Áreas de Proteção Ambiental Cabreúva, Cajamar e Jundiaí, realizado entre os anos de 2006 e 2009, pretende-se compreender as possibilidades e os limites da gestão compartilhada em Unidades de Conservação de Uso Sustentável com base nos pressupostos teóricos do capital social, considerando os inúmeros interesses envolvidos no processo e as próprias dificuldades inerentes aos debates efetuados em espaços participativos e plurais
Abstract: Though in the past few decades the global debate on the environment has gained an increased relevancy in United Nations sponsored conferences, this has not resulted in concrete actions toward sustainability. Still, it has contributed to sustainability-enhancing transformations at the local level. Such changes include the creation of new institutional arrangements and ways of planning that stress participation, democratization and decentralization of political processes. In this work, I will call such changes "environmental governance." This work is guided by the principle that the involvement and democratic participation of social actors are vital for the increased legitimacy and efficiency of public policy, especially that which relates to the environment. This principle shifts the focus of discussions and decision-making from a technocrat-state apparatus to more socially representative spaces. With this shift, the reach of planning and environmental policies would arise from the quality of the interaction and synergy between the representatives of the State and the civil society - the development of a stock of social capital. The participation of social actors, proposing partnerships in public management, can contribute to a more democratic discussion with the State. A case-study on the Management Council of the Cabreúva, Cajamar and Jundiaí Environmental Protection Areas, carried out between 2006 and 2009, provides the basis of this work. The analysis aims to understand the possibilities and limits of shared management in the Units of Sustainable Use Preservation, using theoretical assumptions of social capital and taking into account the numberless interests included in this process and the difficulties which are inherent to the debates in participatory and plural spaces
Doutor

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Litmark, Jenny, and Sofia Titus. "Leder högre CSR- prestanda till lägre kapitalbegränsningar? : en kvantitativ studie på 651 bolag under en tioårsperiod." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för ekonomi, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-26998.

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: I denna studie undersöker vi om CSR-strategier påverkar företagets möjligheter att få tillgång till externt kapital genom att sänka dess kapitalbegränsningar. Förtydligat syftar studien till att förklara hur sambandet mellan CSR-arbete och kapitalbegränsningar samt mellan CSR:s dimensioner och kapitalbegränsningar ser ut. Kan ett ökat CSR-arbete minska kapitalbegränsningar, ge ökad tillgång till kapital som i sin tur leder till större möjligheter att göra lönsamma investeringar och därmed skapa värde för företaget? Tidigare forskning har stannat vid att konstatera att CSR är värdeskapande och ökar företagets finansiella prestation men få rapporter går vidare och förklarar på vilket sätt värdet skapas eller varför den finansiella prestationen ökar. Vi tar ett steg till och ställer oss frågan varför värde skapas.
In this study, we investigate whether CSR strategies affect the company's ability to access external capital by reducing its capital constraints. Explained, the study aims at explaining the relationship between CSR performance and capital constrains, as well as between CSR dimensions and capital constrains. Can an increased CSR performance reduce capital constrains, increase access to capital, which in turn leads to greater opportunities to make profitable investments and thus create value for the company? Previous research has stopped finding that CSR is creating value and increases the company's financial performance, but few reports go further and explain how the value is created or why the financial performance is increasing. We take a further step and ask why value is created.

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Elabidi, Houda. "La prise en compte des facteurs ESG (environnementaux, sociaux et de gouvernance) dans l'appréhension du risque opérationnel : le cas du secteur bancaire en France." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Paris 8, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019PA080058.

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L’évolution de l’environnement des institutions financières suscite un changement stratégique et opérationnel, qui se traduit par une adaptation de leurs modèles de gouvernance, de leurs méthodes et de leurs processus de gestion. Dans ce contexte, les institutions financières sont prises, de plus en plus, dans des processus d’expression, d’influence, de normalisation qui interfèrent sur leur propre vision et possibilité d’agir. Un tel contexte ne pourrait pas supporter ni la passivité ni l’inaction et devrait, bien au contraire, inciter les institutions financières à développer des processus de gestion des risques plus sophistiqués et d’en favoriser une meilleure application. Mais, l'émergence de nouvelles sources de risque a rendu plus complexe l'analyse du risque global encouru par ces institutions d’où la nécessité de le détecter, de le contrôler et de le limiter rapidement. C’est pourquoi, une analyse environnementale sociale et de gouvernance permet de diversifier les sources d’informations, d’affiner et de nuancer l’évaluation financière par des critères non financiers, mais qui participent pleinement à la politique de développement dans le secteur financier. Ceci, renforce le rôle de la gouvernance du risque qui doit établir les lignes directrices et définir un cadre pour l’utilisation d’une approche plus globale de la gestion du risque. Très souvent, les informations relatives aux risques environnementaux, sociaux et de gouvernance sont négligées par les institutions financières, plus particulièrement, les banques
In the adaptation of their governance models, methods and management processes. In this context, financial institutions are more and more involved in processes of expression, influence and standardization that interfere with their own vision and the ability to act. Such a context could not support either passivity or inaction and should, on the contrary, encourage financial institutions to develop more sophisticated risk management processes and to promote better application. However, the emergence of new sources of risk has made it more difficult to analyze the overall risk incurred by these institutions, hence the need to detect, control and limit it rapidly. This is why a social and governance environmental analysis makes it possible to diversify the sources of information, to refine and qualify the financial evaluation by non-financial criteria, but which participate fully in the development policy in the financial sector. This strengthens the role of risk governance in establishing guidelines and setting a framework for using a more comprehensive approach to risk management. In many cases, information on environmental, social and governance risks is overlooked by financial institutions, especially banks

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Blandford, Nicholas, Timothy Nash, and André Winter. "Strategic Sustainable Investing : Recognizing Value in Transitional Leadership." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Avdelningen för maskinteknik, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2265.

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Institutional Investors own a large share of publicly traded companies, controlling a significant amount of the economy‟s working capital. These investors currently use little or no sustainability-related information to make their decisions, reinforcing a loop of increasingly unsustainable growth. This paper puts forward a new investment strategy that recognizes true movement towards sustainability and its link with bottom line benefits for investors: Strategic Sustainable Investing (SSI). To achieve this desired future, Institutional Investors must be able to recognize corporations that are strategically leading the transition towards sustainability. An Analysis Tool was developed to help address this need by identifying sectoral Emerging Sustainability Issues (ESI) using a consensus-based scientific definition of sustainability. Once ESIs are identified, companies‟ strategies regarding each issue are assessed. This Tool was scrutinized by a panel of experts in the financial and sustainable development industries, and was tested on three companies within the Unconventional Oil & Gas Sector in Canada. Results confirmed the usefulness of a tool that can recognize which companies are leading the sustainable development agenda, and identified the need for future research on the financial materiality of sustainability-oriented actions.

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Botshinda, Amelia. "Implementeringen av koldioxidsnåla och klimatpositiva benchmarks samt ESG-relaterad transparens i BMR : en kritisk granskning av kommissionens föreslagna ändringar av Benchmarkförordningen och dess förenlighet med de åsyftade ändamålen." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Filosofiska fakulteten, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-165454.

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Vi lever i en tid präglad av drastiska klimatförändringar och ökade utsläpp av växthusgaser, där klimatångest har kommit att bli ett problem som tycks drabba såväl privatpersoner som företag. Allteftersom vår medvetenhet för samtidens klimathot ökar, har även hållbarhet fått en allt större betydelse för europeiska investerare. En tydlig konsekvens härav är den kraftiga ökningen av antalet hållbarhetsindex som identifierats på finansmarknaden. Hållbarhetsindex används ofta som komponent i passiva investeringsstrategier eller som verktyg för att mäta prestationen av olika värdepapper i en portfölj, och får på så vis funktionen av ett benchmark. Metoden för att utveckla såväl hållbara index som benchmarks kan emellertid variera, vilket ofta beror på att klimatrelaterad information kan vara extremt komplex att omvandla till finansiellt relaterbara värden. Svårigheterna härom har således minskat marknadens förtroende för sådana investeringsalternativ, trots den ökade benägenheten hos investerare att ta hänsyn till hållbarhet även i finansiella sammanhang. Bristande lagstiftning inom området föranledde Europeiska kommissionen att upprätta ett förslag om ändring av Benchmarkförordningen år 2018, som en del av sin handlingsplan för finansiering av hållbar tillväxt. Förordningen reglerar i dagsläget främst administratörer av benchmarks, vilka innehar det övergripande juridiska ansvaret för ett benchmark. Med förslaget införs nya kategorier för koldioxidsnåla och klimatpositiva benchmarks samt en reviderad transparensreglering som förpliktigar administratörer att offentliggöra hur de beaktar hållbarhet i sin metod och referensvärdesdeklaration. Även om förslaget välkomnats av flertalet aktörer, föreligger anledning att ifrågasätta huruvida marknaden kommer kunna förhålla sig till de ambitiösa ändringarna, samt om effekten av reglerna blir den som kommissionen eftersträvat. I uppsatsen identifieras och diskuteras de potentiella utmaningarna med förslagets ikraftträdande, vilka sedermera analyseras i förhållande till de åsyftade ändamålen med reglerna. Kritik riktas i uppsatsen främst mot förordningens bristande möjligheter att hålla andra aktörer ansvariga, eftersom uppfyllandet av de nya reglerna inte enbart är beroende av administratörernas eget agerande. Vidare konstateras att marknaden inledningsvis kommer att få stora svårigheter med insamling och verifiering av den klimatrelaterade information som är avgörande för användningen av miljövänliga benchmarks. Sett ur ett långsiktigt perspektiv tros emellertid ändringarna kunna skapa goda förutsättningar för en bättre inkludering av hållbarhet på finansmarknaden, utan kompromiss av ett konsument- eller investerarskydd.

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Lew, Stephen F. "Meaningful measurement and applications of environmental, social, and governance information." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:06a9e769-9fdd-4afd-b0e1-f5012456ba89.

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In the remarkable developments that have occurred recently in all sectors of society, e.g. environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration, responsible investing, social entrepreneurship, and strategic philanthropy, the measurement of extra-financial (or non- financial or external) information remains a key issue. While 'making a difference' is the goal of such developments, no integrated externality measurement framework (IEMF) has been proposed, recognized as a reasonable candidate, or adopted by practitioners. The overall objective of this thesis is to develop such an IEMF which would facilitate meaningful measurements and interpretations of the 'quantum of difference' (e.g. in the context of ESG information) and applications thereof towards resource allocation strategies. The aim is not so much to develop some putative 'perfectly accurate model of reality' but an epistemic framework which would serve as a communicative and organizational anchor. The overall objective derives to five research imperatives, which are responded to by five core chapters in the thesis. The following key findings emerge: Finding 1. The ESG metric landscape exists in a patchwork. In particular, while social impact metrics have proliferated recently, they constitute an incoherent domain of its own, separate from the environmental and governance metric literatures. In devising an IEMF, the key challenges include aggregating disparate metrics and disaggregating causalities. Once such a framework has been devised and adopted by practitioners, one can innovate various resource allocation strategies. Finding 2. The attitudes and approaches toward measurement and metrics can broadly be typologized as being fetishistic, positivistic, cynical, and pragmatic. Taking the pragmatic stance allows us to ascribe an appropriate epistemic status to metrics and calibrates the philosophical proclivity of the culminating IEMF. Finding 3. A geography of philanthropic governance exists. In particular, there are variegated similarities and differences in the perceptions and usage of ecosocial metrics. Significant overlaps in the domain and geographic foci of giving signify the feasibility of meaningful comparison, competition and collaboration among such organizations with metrics at the centrepiece. Finding 4. While best practice benchmarks in the usage of metrics in driving positive tangible changes are rare, a highly innovative integrated rural development program known as Saemaul Undong serves as a solid example. It is possible to maximize the efficiency in resource-deployment, induce participation and competition, and scale a parochial initiative to a national level through the usage of performance metrics. Finding 5. Calibrating appropriate philosophical stance, aggregating widely disparate measuranda, disaggregating casual attribution are among the key challenges towards developing an IEMF. Identifying and adopting appropriate formalisms facilitate addressing such challenges. For adoption in practice, however, one must factor in human expertise and judgements when making resource deployment decisions along with the numbers calculated through such a framework. The findings above constitute a series of 'firsts' of the kind in each relevant bodies of literature, paving the way for further explorations.

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Peiris, Dinusha Banking &amp Finance Australian School of Business UNSW. "The relationship between environmental social governance factors and US stock performance." Publisher:University of New South Wales. Banking & Finance, 2009. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/43729.

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Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) has experienced substantial growth over the last decade, although there is still a lack of consensus on whether this form of investing leads to competitive investment returns. This paper considers the case for SRI by examining the relationship between a range of Environmental Social Governance (ESG) rating factors and financial performance of US listed companies. Previous research in this area has largely been at the portfolio level and focussed on return as a performance measure. This study makes an important contribution to the literature by utilising stock level data to consider the relationship between ESG ratings and not only stock return but also wider measures of financial performance, namely valuation and operating performance. Using a multifactor framework, this study provides evidence of a significant positive relationship between a range of ESG rating criteria and market to book value and return on assets measures, whilst a positive although inconsistent relationship between ratings and stock return is apparent. I argue that the relationship with valuation and operating performance is more clearly identified due to these measures being based on annual data, hence being consistent with rating data and also more stable than stock return (which is impacted by shorter term factors). In comparison to Brammer et al. (2006), the analysis shows that higher stakeholder ratings on the whole are more positively related to stock return. The results are broadly consistent with findings of Galema et al. (2008), although additionally highlight the significance of higher ratings for both valuation and operating performance and that employee conditions are more relevant than other stakeholder rating criteria.

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DeCaro, Daniel A., Brian C. Chaffin, Edella Schlager, Ahjond S. Garmestani, and J. B. Ruhl. "Legal and institutional foundations of adaptive environmental governance." RESILIENCE ALLIANCE, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/623959.

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Legal and institutional structures fundamentally shape opportunities for adaptive governance of environmental resources at multiple ecological and societal scales. Properties of adaptive governance are widely studied. However, these studies have not resulted in consolidated frameworks for legal and institutional design, limiting our ability to promote adaptation and social-ecological resilience. We develop an overarching framework that describes the current and potential role of law in enabling adaptation. We apply this framework to different social-ecological settings, centers of activity, and scales, illustrating the multidimensional and polycentric nature of water governance. Adaptation typically emerges organically among multiple centers of agency and authority in society as a relatively self-organized or autonomous process marked by innovation, social learning, and political deliberation. This self-directed and emergent process is difficult to create in an exogenous, top-down fashion. However, traditional centers of authority may establish enabling conditions for adaptation using a suite of legal, economic, and democratic tools to legitimize and facilitate self-organization, coordination, and collaboration across scales. The principles outlined here provide preliminary legal and institutional foundations for adaptive environmental governance, which may inform institutional design and guide future scholarship.

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Wukich, Jacqueline Jarosz. "The Conflict Between Chief Executive Officer Power And Different Measures Of Environmental And Social Disclosure." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1613539052030591.

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Ford, Lucy Helen. "Global enclosures : a critical analysis of environmental governance, trade and social movements." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.340856.

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Bloor, Richard. "Forest governance and forest conservation in Sabah, Malaysia." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2014. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/73239/.

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This Thesis is concerned with multilevel and multi-sector forest governance in the Malaysian State of Sabah. It begins by amending the theory of vertical institutional interplay by applying constructivist and historical new institutional theoretical approaches, which contrasts with the more static theoretical foundations that have characterised study of this area to date. It then develops an analytical framework that uses policy frame analysis. This is designed to apply this new theoretical approach to the empirical context of Sabah. This framework analyses empirical subject through three stages. The first stage investigates the development of forest governance institutions at the global level and the state level within Sabah. The second stage then considers how the intersection of these developments, specifically focusing on role of ideas, discourse and agency, created the impetus for new policy initiatives in two local-level empirical examples. The third stage then considers the extent to which these initiatives were successful in institutionalising new forest conservation practices, or conversely how they were impeded by state level historical institutional continuities. The findings of this Thesis differentiate two forms of vertical institutional interplay. The first is the way global institutions affect state level ones where key actors mobilise ideas and discourses to in order to shift the direction of policy and initiate institutional change. The second is where the influence of global institutions is blocked by barriers created by long term historic institutional legacies that have shaped state level institutions. These findings show that vertical institutional interplay has initiated a partial shift in forest institutions and policy in Sabah. This shift varies between different locations according to the relative influence of these two forms of institutional interplay, and has created more dynamism and uncertainty in Sabah’s forest governance institutions. This Thesis contributes to existing literature through its ability to better conceptualise the role of vertical institutional interplay in a way that can account for the tension between the fixed and dynamic aspects of institutions. This contrasts to older approaches that have focused largely on the fixed aspects of institutions. The contribution is also demonstrated in the way this theoretical approach is able to better conceptualise fine grain variations in these dynamics at a local level of scale.

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Tomas, Cusicanqui. "Assessing the adaptive capacity of Sweden's environmental governance." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Statsvetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-128279.

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Different challenges arising from increasingly uncertain and unpredictable environmental and economicconditions have been shifting the focus of public governance and socio-economic development. Morerecently, empirical studies have demonstrated a transitional epoch in which humanity is currently in: TheAnthropocene, as well as its harmful effects that degrade the biosphere, and thus our economic, political,social well-being. The casual dynamics of climate change and its impacts on life-supporting ecosystemshas increasingly been recognized by a resilient approach which incorporates adaptive processes andschemes, allowing public governance to embrace the changes rather than control uncertainty. Thisresearch introduces the interwoven concepts of adaptive capacity, adaptive governance, and resiliencewithin a social and environmental framework. It provides a review of how these concepts support aparadigm shift to mitigating current and future challenges—understood through a multidisciplinaryapproach, and how scholars have sought to develop a blueprint to improve the need to foster and mobilizeadaptive capacity within the governance of the commons. In Sweden, key governmental and businessleaders have shown the ability to foster environmental governance that is capable of developing analternative form of planning, implementing, and managing public policy. Moreover, Sweden’s concertedmultilevel governance and public policy efforts have promoted an all-encompassing generational, mainlythrough: coordinated environmental policies and private, public, and civil society partnerships. Theseinitiatives have led to innovative technologies and projects (e.g. urban vertical farming technology) as wellas cross collaboration and integration of companies and industries in order to achieve economic, social,and environmentally symbiosis.

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Balasubramaniam, Arun S. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Socially Responsible Investing : a comparative analysis of environmental, social, governance, reputational and labor factors." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76922.

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Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-92).
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) aims to deliver competitive investment returns while fostering social good. It aims achieves its objective by including a firm's corporate social performance (CSP) in its investment d s . I has giesgnfct momentum over the past few years and is poised to assume a mainstream role in the asset management business. However, the scholarship on the effect of corporate social performance on a firm's corporate financial performance (CFP) is ambiguous. CSP is a complex entity made of multi-dimensional sub-components. This thesis attempts to breakdown the multi-dimensional CSP into its core constituent dimensions and to examine their inter-relationships and relationship with CFP, using statistical analysis. Two different vendor data sets were used as samples to understand if proprietary transformations made by vendors affect results. Analysis reveals that differences in factor payoff horizons, difficulties in transforming environmental, social and governance data into composite CSP ratings and the proprietary nature of such transformation could be some of the contributing factors to the ambiguity in establishing the nature of CSP-CFP relationship.
by Arun Balasubramaniam.
S.M.in Engineering and Management

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Hua, Meiying. "Media Coverage of Negative Environmental, Social and Governance Issues, and Analyst Cash Flow Forecasts." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1576678957366195.

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Enqvist, Johan. "Urban environmental stewardship : Roles and reasons for civic engagements in governance of social-ecological systems." Licentiate thesis, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-116582.

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Stewardship as a concept is increasingly brought forward as a goal to reach sustainability goals of ensuring human wellbeing within the limits of Earth’s life support systems. Scholarship on the required capacities for planetary stewardship is growing rapidly, as are the insights. This thesis focuses on contributing with knowledge about what stewardship implies in terms of civic engagement in environmental issues, particularly in contexts where these can be particularly challenging: rapidly changing cities. Paper I describes the internal functioning of a citizen network engaged in various environmental issues in Bangalore, India. Analyzing social network structure and desired outcomes, it shows that while the loose structure inhibits efficiency, it encourages inclusiveness and builds legitimacy among members. Despite a reduced capacity to actively mobilize members, the network facilitates ecosystem monitoring and serves as an information platform to connect diverse groups across the city. Paper II describes how local engagement to restore Bangalorean lakes can influence city-level governance of water supply. Following key events in the 1960s, Bangalore has become increasingly dependent on a single source of water and seems unable to explore other supply approaches for its rapidly growing population. The study shows that the system’s trap-like dynamics can be rewired by citizen-based lake groups by incentivizing authorities to break long-standing centralization trends. By re- acknowledging the water bodies’ multifunctional role as man-made water harvesting units, groups have gathered local support and improved monitoring to protect lakes after restoration. Together, the two papers show that civic involvement in urban environmental stewardship can improve governance by complementing and acting as a watchdog over public authorities.

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Elgert, Laureen. "The politics of evidence : towards critical deliberative governance in sustainable development." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/146/.

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Recent debates about environmental governance emphasize the roles of participation, evidence and deliberation. Authors have discussed how deliberative theory can deepen commitments to public participation in policy debates. Evidence, however, is often presented as neutral and objective fact, and on this basis is privileged in policy debates, preemptively defining environmental problems and solutions. Under this circumstance, how can policy processes take deliberation seriously? How can the politics of evidence be identified and openly addressed by participants in policy processes? These research questions are addressed by analyzing three cases of environmental governance mechanisms, in the developing country context of Paraguay. The cases were selected for their emphasis on evidence and participation in decision-making. Also, each brings into question the politics of evidence, as their policy implications have raised debate and contention. The specific governance mechanisms explored in this study are: 1) land classification for conservation and rural development; 2) land use planning scenarios generated with a computer modeling program; and, 3) the development of global certification standards for soy production within the ‘Roundtable on Responsible Soy’. Each is seen as a means of addressing what is widely seen as rapid and extensive environmental degradation in Paraguay, and also the historic and continued exclusion of much of the public in environmental decision-making. The principal findings of my analysis are that i) public participation in environmental governance is often constrained by what is considered evidence; and ii) evidence is considered such because it is assumedly based on fact, but evidence-based arguments are influenced by social and political factors. As a result of these findings, I argue for a new approach to environmental governance – critical deliberative governance. A reflexive, non-essentialist approach to knowledge strengthens deliberation, by making explicit the social basis for authority and credibility, and opening up its tenets to debate. This critical approach to knowledge is vital for a democracy in which normative arguments are not effectively closed off by formal and authoritative expertise.

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Ghahreman, Javier. "Green Theory in Environmental Policy Making in China." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-22763.

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Climate change has been a topic of discussion for quite some time now. International Relations Theory, which is widely used to study the politics of the world also has a subfield of Green Theory in IR which concerns itself with world politics in a combination of the environment.This study has been conducted as part of an investigation to study the effects of green theories on green policymaking, specifically in the case of China. For the study, a qualitative study was conducted where trends of environmental governance related results were examined to draw a conclusion to the research questions.This study is in hope to present the case of China which ranks among the most contaminated nation and is also a major contributor to the global environmental crisis of ecological damage. It presents how China has been able to turn the tables and has become a case exemplar instead for the world to follow in environment protection owing to strong laws and implementation by its government.

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Garduño, Diaz Philippe Youssef. "Social Safeguards for REDD+ in Mexico’s Watershed Management Program." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-176121.

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Case studies on environmental governance are essential to improve comprehension on howto implement international agreements. This study focuses on seven social safeguards relevant toREDD+. The existence of these social safeguards is examined in Mexico’s watershed managementprogram in La Sierra Madre and La Costa of Chiapas. The watershed management program is anotherPayment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme similar to REDD+. Questionnaires and interviews wereused to conduct primary research with participants of the water management program. Upon theexamination of the collected data the safeguards were analysed on their sufficiency for REDD+.REDD+ itself could not be examined as it is still in the stage of preparation at the time of the research.Results varied between each safeguards. A complaint mechanism does exist but is underutilized andgenerally dysfunctional. Local knowledge is considered and used as the watershed managementprogram has a flat hierarchy of decision-making. However this is only the case at the lowestinstitutional level of the Comités de Cuenca. The higher the level the less likely it is that localknowledge will be considered. This is reflected in the social safeguard of full and effectiveparticipation, which is only fulfilled at the lowest level. There are no barriers to participation when itcomes to implementing and evaluating the mechanism on a local scale. However the design of it isdone on institutional levels beyond the reach of locals. The application of free, prior and informedconsent is upheld within the mechanism, as everyone participates by his or her own free choice.Marginalized stakeholders such as women, indigenous people and youth are also free to participate;unfortunately, little is done to encourage them to do so. As a result few to none are present, turning theComités de Cuenca into decision-making bodies for comparably wealthy and influential citizens at thelocal scale. The benefits acquired from the mechanism mostly go to e.g. work-committees where muchof the funds are distributed as income to temporary workers from the local community. According toparticipants of the Comités and managers alike, the decision-making process is equal to the waydecisions were made before the arrival of the mechanism.It could be observed that some social safeguards are in place, however, none of them sufficiently forREDD+. In regards to implementation of REDD+ the most challenging social safeguard will be theconcept of “free, prior and informed consent”. This holds true as long as REDD+ will be implementednationally. If that will be the case the government would have to convince locals across the country toparticipate in REDD+, including those that already announced their opposition in the Declaration ofPatihuitz (Declaration of Patihuitz 2011). Without legitimization there will be little participation andcommitment on the side of local people, which is crucial to make REDD+ work. Hence it isrecommended that the mechanism takes a process-oriented focus in order to legitimize the mechanism.
implement international agreements. At the 16th Climate Change Conference, the United Nationsformally agreed to launch a new Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme called ReducingEmission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Controversy exists concerning socialand environmental safeguards, which are additional rules aimed at preventing harm to civil society andnature. This study focuses on seven social safeguards that could be identified through a review ofinternational law. These are: complaint mechanism; consideration and usage of local knowledge; fulland effective participation; application of free, prior and informed consent; inclusion of marginalizedstakeholders; equitable benefit-sharing; and the use of traditional methods for decision-making.This study examines the existence of these social safeguards in Mexico’s watershed managementprogram of La Sierra Madre and La Costa of Chiapas. The watershed management program is anotherPES scheme similar to REDD+. Questionnaires and interviews were used as a means to conductprimary research with participants of the water management program. Upon the examination of thecollected data the safeguards were analysed on their sufficiency for REDD+. REDD+ itself could notbe examined as it is still in the stage of preparation at the time of the research.It could be observed that some social safeguards are in place, however, none of them sufficiently forREDD+. In regards to the implementation of REDD+ the most challenging social safeguard will be theconcept of “free, prior and informed consent”. This holds true as long as REDD+ will be implementednationally. If that will be the case the government would have to convince locals across the country toparticipate in REDD+, including those that already announced their opposition in the Declaration ofPatihuitz (Declaration of Patihuitz 2011).As REDD+ is another governmental mechanism it needs to fulfil specific requirements in theChiapanecan context in order to function properly. One of the most important foundations is to createtrust between stakeholders which has been lost during decades of conflict and corruption. This trust canbe established by committing to the guidelines of the social safeguards with particular focus on theinclusion of marginalized stakeholders and transparency. Hence it is recommended that the mechanismtakes a process-oriented focus in order to legitimize the mechanism. Without legitimization there willbe little participation and commitment from local people, which is crucial to make REDD+ work.

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Thomas, Gareth. "Constructing the hydrogen fuel cell community : a case study of networked innovation governance." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6630/.

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This thesis presents the findings of an actor-centred constructivist case study into the policy community emerging around Hydrogen and Fuel Cell innovation. Emerging at the intersection between increasingly networked energy; climate and industrial policy, innovation has been the focal point of literatures advocating transitions towards more sustainable socio-technical systems. The thesis develops an interpretivist-constructivist methodology to sketch how actor interpretations of competency and context inform the interests and strategies in innovation policy processes. Drawing on interviews and extensive documentary research it argues that while innovation governance is, in part, a product of networked interactions between HFC community members, these interactions are circumscribed by prevailing policy paradigms. Expressed via a commercial logic and empowered by the resources of large industrial firms, such paradigms de-politicise governance practices and align innovation priorities around those compatible with the interests of large industrial interests. The thesis contributes to our understanding of interpretation as the means by which ideas and resources shape strategic interaction, and serves to remind us that networked governance can close down as well as open up spaces of participation in policy processes.

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Matthew, Gaudreau. "Situating Adaptive Environmental Governance: Non-governmental Actors in the Protection of Nanjing’s Qinhuai River." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/24285.

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Studies of adaptive governance in social-ecological systems have identified common features that assist social actors in responding to environmental pressures. Among these features, multiple sources of ecological knowledge, trust, and networks between actors have been highlighted as properties that contribute to successful governance arrangements. However, studies in adaptive governance have also been critiqued using a political ecology approach. This is due to their under-theorization of political elements that can constrain or promote the formation of the features of adaptive governance. In particular, power dynamics between actors and the subsequent privileging of one source of knowledge over another might have an effect on governance arrangements. In China, environmental degradation is a serious issue. The Qinhuai River, located in the city of Nanjing, has experienced significant ecological decline over the last 30 years as urbanization pressures on the system increased. Over the same period, China has undergone changes in state-society relations, including allowing the formation of NGOs. Since the turn of the millennium, several NGOs have begun working on issues related to the Qinhuai River, including raising awareness and producing information on the environment. This study examines the features of adaptive governance in a critical light by situating them in the local political context of China. The relationship between NGOs, fishers who use the Qinhuai River and government are examined using Social Network Analysis and semi-structured interviews in order to understand the production of information, networking and trust between these actors. It is shown that the existing arrangements to include NGOs and fishers in the river’s governance activities are guided by a corporatist system of state-sanctioned representation. This is not conducive to adaptive governance arrangements, despite the increasing existence of ENGO networks and new sources of knowledge over the last decade. It is thus important that studies of adaptive governance take steps to contextualize their findings within the local political climate.

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Hadley, Kershaw Eleanor. "Co-producing Future Earth : ambiguity and experimentation in the governance of global environmental change research." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49869/.

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The aim of this thesis is to investigate efforts to transform global environmental change research through co-design and co-production (involving non-academic actors in research governance and conduct). Social scientific work to date on this topic has largely taken an evaluative perspective, outlining challenges of and guidelines for co-production on the ground. By contrast, there is little work on how co-production is conceptualised and put into practice through (international) research governance. Yet institutions aiming to govern research are significant arbiters of meaning and power; their efforts to change research are worthy of investigation. The thesis is based on a qualitative case study of Future Earth, a major international research initiative on global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability. Future Earth is unique in its ambition to internationally coordinate and co-design/co-produce new GEC/sustainability research at a global scale. The study is grounded in co-productionist, interpretive science and technology studies, drawing on ideas about political imaginaries of science and experimental approaches to engagement. It is based on thematic analysis of data from documents, interviews, focus groups and observation of Future Earth’s emergence and development between 2010 and 2015. The analysis suggests that visions of Future Earth were ambitious, diverse and sometimes ambiguous, evoking two potential institutional forms: a unified, cohesive ‘flagship’, or a ‘rich tapestry’ of varied initiatives. Ambiguity persisted in how co-production and related concepts were understood, with varying definitions motivated by different rationales for increased (or limited) involvement of non-academic stakeholders, from ensuring relevance to democratising expertise to preserving the objectivity or independence of science. These notions of appropriate engagement were underpinned by disparate conceptions of the value of research (as a service to society, site of democratic deliberation, or public good), reproducing (and challenging) established models of science and democracy. The thesis argues that, from an experimental perspective, this ambiguity in visions of (co-production in) Future Earth can be seen to enable flexibility and allow differences to co-exist. This might require new, perhaps radical, thinking about how to organise, conduct and value research and its outcomes, with an increased emphasis on fostering, appreciating and productively working with diversity and institutional indeterminacy.

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Bo, Le. "A neo-Gramscian perspective on varieties of environmental governance : hegemonic struggles in China's rare earth industry." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/16064/.

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This study aims to discuss the changing hegemonic struggles among the state, business and NGOs in the development of environmental governance of China's rare earth industry. Although rare earths are indispensable to myriad clean technologies, mining and processing rare earth ores cause heavy pollution. As the world's largest supplier, China's rare earth industry has developed at huge environmental cost. Environmental pollution in the upstream supply chains of the high-tech and new-energy industries becomes one of the most thorny issues in China's environmental governance. With the critical reviews on the varieties of capitalism approach and the neo-Gramscian governance studies, the study proposes a neo-Gramscian perspective on varieties of environmental governance, through merging a macro-level analysis of institutional diversity with a micro-level understanding of Gramscian hegemonic struggles. In line with an interpretivist stance, the study employs a qualitative case study approach to investigate the institutional variations of the state in China's varieties of governance from a planned economy to a market economy and the changing hegemonic struggles involved, with consideration of the complex historical trajectories and distinctive political economies in China. Based on the empirical evidence collected via semi-structured interviews and documentary reviews, the study carries out a critical discourse analysis to discuss a series of contested environmental issues in China's rare earth industry. Empirical findings conclude that the genres of China's varieties of governance have been transformed from highly prescriptive planning to government supervision, and the state still plays a leading role in regulating and coordinating contemporary alliance building. The study enriches the abstract VoC typologies with China's institutional diversity; extends the Gramsci framework to China‟s regime with particular emphasis of state power; provides a more plural and dynamic understanding of the hegemonic struggles within China's varieties of governance.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Environmental Social Governance (ESG)'

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