Environmental, social, and governance performance as an influencing factor of financial sustainability: Evidence from the global high-tech sector

The corporate sector strives to improve its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance to transition from short-term to sustainable long-term profit maximisation. This study thus explores the impact of ESG performance on the financial sustainability (FS) of a sample of the top 100 global high-tech firms. Specifically, we employ the two-step generalised method of moments to control for endogeneity bias and a panel data fixed effects model to control for unobserved heterogeneity. Empirical findings reveal that overall ESG performance has a statistically negative association with the FS of global high-tech firms. Individual pillar-wise analysis reveals that the environmental and social (governance) pillar has a negative (positive) association with the FS of the sampled firms. This result proves that each ESG pillar exerts varying effects on corporate performance indicators. Overall, the results provide empirical evidence that could help policymakers devise policies for investing optimally in ESG indicators to spur corporate FS.