ELABORATION OF SUCCESSFUL ESG POLICY: LEARNING FROM EUROPEAN COMPANIES

Abstract

The ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) approach serves as a strategic response to contemporary social and environmental challenges, embodying a company's awareness, vision, and measures towards achieving sustainable development goals. Simultaneously, ESG policy is a communication tool with stakeholders and a determinant of the company's competitiveness. This study aims to delineate the principal components of ESG policy and strategy – namely, vision, values, and goals – through an in-depth examination (textual analysis) of successful ESG companies' practices. To this end, ten leading European companies were selected based on their ESG ratings by Sustainalytics, and information regarding their sustainability vision, goals, and values was collected. Textual analysis was conducted using Voyant-tools.org v. 2.6.13. The findings show that the content and context of companies' ESG policies are shaped by terms such as sustainability, social and environmental issues, labour, development, business, responsibility, climate, stakeholders, people, impact and change. Sustainability is often associated with strategy, culture and design, while business is associated with responsibility, impact and value. The predominant issues identified in ESG policies relate to social and environmental aspects, governance, corporate management and partnerships. In particular, the emphasis on social and environmental issues – including policies, practices, responsibility and impact – is pervasive. Each company takes a different approach to developing the core principles of its ESG policy. In outlining this, the study underscores the diversity and multifaceted nature of ESG policies, with the consideration of industry specifics emerging as a critical feature to ensure effective implementation. The findings serve as a valuable resource for companies, providing guidance on the development of key components of ESG policies (vision, goals, values) and as an empirical basis for improving scientific and methodological approaches to assessing the effectiveness of ESG policies.