How ESG Performance and Sustainability Governance Shape SDGs Disclosure and Firm Value: Evidence from OECD Firms

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:This paper provides a comprehensive empirical framework linking ESG, sustainability governance, and SDGs disclosure, useful for scholars studying corporate sustainability and disclosure.

🏢実務担当者:The findings suggest that establishing sustainability committees and expanding reporting can amplify the value-enhancing effects of ESG improvements.

🏛政策担当者:The evidence supports policies that mandate or encourage sustainability committees and reporting as mechanisms to align corporate actions with SDGs.

This study examines the impact of corporate sustainability practices on firm performance, sustainable development, and value by focusing on ESG performance, sustainability committees, and sustainability reporting. While prior literature documents a general association between ESG performance and firm value, limited attention has been paid to the role of sustainability governance structures and their contribution to sustainable development outcomes, particularly SDGs disclosure, in a multi-country setting. Sustainable development is proxied by an SDGs disclosure index constructed using firm-level disclosures aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals based on LSEG (Refinitiv) ESG item-level data. The analysis controls for firm size, leverage, profitability, industry-, and country-level institutional factors to ensure robust results. Using panel data comprising 36,438 firm-year observations from 6073 companies across OECD member countries from 2017 to 2022, this study employs a fixed-effects model based on diagnostic tests, including the Hausman and Breusch–Pagan tests. The findings revealed that higher ESG performance scores positively influence both sustainable development outcomes and market value. Moreover, the presence of sustainability committees and broader sustainability reporting further strengthens these relationships. These results highlight the importance of institutional sustainability governance in translating ESG commitments into measurable firm values and SDG-related outcomes. This study provides novel empirical evidence on how sustainability-focused governance mechanisms enhance corporate contributions to sustainable development, offering important implications for managers and policymakers as well as directions for future research.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.3390/su18052474first seen 2026-05-05 23:07:29