Relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance Factors and Financial Performance in Central European Countries

Abstract

Measuring financial business performance is a key assumption for the responsible management of a company. Traditionally, financial measures were mainly used, but in recent years the importance of non-financial measures has increased pronouncedly. Currently, companies are encouraged to reflect on their business’s sustainability aspect. One way of measuring sustainability performance can be a company’s ESG score. This article aims to analyse the relationship between a traditional financial performance measure (return on sales) and a modern measure (ESG score) in Central European countries. The research sample consists of two groups. The first contains 74 companies from the Visegrad Group countries (V4), and the second consists of 214 companies from Germany and Austria. The relationship between those two measures was studied using the Spearman rank order correlation coefficient. Subsequently, the amount of the ESG score was analysed in both of the groups. The research findings indicate no or weak relationship between the ROS and ESG score. However, based on the Levene’s F-test, a statistically significant difference was also identified between the two country groups considering the amount of the ESG score.