Beyond Profit: Exploring the Complexities of ESG

Over the past decade, businesses have made a concerted effort to improve their monitoring, analysis, and reporting of a wide range of non-monetary societal impacts collectively grouped under the label of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. Driven largely by the investment community, the ESG framework seeks to capture diverse, traditionally-overlooked aspects of organizational performance. In this episode of The Management Lab, we explore this emergent concept with key insights from some of the latest research on the topic. Specific topics discussed include: What organizational activities fall under the ESG rubric? How does ESG differ from the earlier movement of corporate social responsibilities (CSR)? What does the evidence suggest regarding ESG efforts’ impacts on a firm’s overall performance? How much do investors really care about the ESG activities of a firm? Do current measures of ESG performance really get at meaningful impacts on society? Give it a listen and see what you make of the ESG phenomenon. Are you a true believer, a persistent skeptic, or somewhere in between?