New insights into corporate sustainability, environmental management and corporate financial performance in European Union: an application of VAR and Granger causality approach

The paper examines how environmental, social, and governance (ESG), including management incentives, influence a firm’s financial performance. The study method is based on an empirical analysis of data describing firm-level information about corporate financial performance and corporate sustainability performance between 2001 and 2020, summing up 6291 observations related to 422 analyzed firms from the European Union (EU). The study findings emphasize that firm size is highly influenced by sustainable economic development and significantly conditioned by a CSR strategy and a capable management team. We also prove a long-term relationship between the measures of corporate financial performance and the scores reflecting corporate ESG performance. Our results show a co-integration relationship between corporate financial performance metrics and corporate sustainability performance scores. ESG corporate performance is highly conditioned by the level of resources affected for this purpose, directly impacting firms’ cash flow.