Share:


The impact of ESG strategies on growth in the logistics industry

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse the relationship between company growth, measured as an increase in Earnings Per Share (EPS) in 3- and 5-year periods, and companies’ financial condition, measured using the Altman z-Score (AS) model. The study was carried out on the example of companies included in the WIG Index and Warsaw Stock Exchange Index (in Polish: Warszawski Indeks Giełdowy – WIG) Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) between 2013 and 2020. Furthermore, among the companies included in the WIG index, companies belonging to the logistics industry were distinguished. An analysis of linear and panel relationships was used to verify the nature of the relationships between the variables taken into account. The z-Altman index was found to have a positive effect on company growth in a 3-year period for companies from the transport and logistics industry and all companies included in the WIG ESG index. Regarding company growth over the longer 5-year period, the influence of the z-Altman index on growth was not observed. Therefore, the results for companies in the WIG index show that for company growth in both the 3- and 5-year periods, the financial and economic condition of a company, measured by the z-Altman index, has no impact on the size of this growth, which was also confirmed by panel models.

Keyword : transport, logistics, company growth, ESG strategies, Altman model

How to Cite
Sadowski, A., Gniadkowska-Szymańska, A., Sokolovskij, E., & Jędrzejczak, R. (2024). The impact of ESG strategies on growth in the logistics industry. Transport, 39(2), 174–182. https://doi.org/10.3846/transport.2024.22545
Published in Issue
Nov 14, 2024
Abstract Views
0
PDF Downloads
0
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

References

Abdi, Y.; Li, X.; Càmara-Turull, X. 2022. How financial performance influences investment in sustainable development initiatives in the airline industry: the moderation role of state-ownership, Sustainable Development 30(5): 1252–1267. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2314

Acosta Castellanos, P. M.; Queiruga-Dios, A. 2022. From environmental education to education for sustainable development in higher education: a systematic review, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 23(3): 622–644. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-04-2021-0167

Adams, M.; Jiang, W. 2016. Do outside directors influence the financial performance of risk-trading firms? Evidence from the United Kingdom (UK) insurance industry, Journal of Banking & Finance 64: 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2015.11.018

Altman, E. I.; Hotchkiss, E. 2006. Corporate credit scoring–insolvency risk models, in E. I. Altman, E. Hotchkiss (Eds.). Corporate Financial Distress and Bankruptcy: Predict and Avoid Bankruptcy, Analyze and Invest in Distressed Debt, 231–264. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118267806.ch11

Apostoaie, C.-M. 2020. Sustainable finance: a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature, International Journal of Management and Applied Science 6(6): 21–27. Available from Internet: https://ijmas.iraj.in/paper_detail.php?paper_id=17279

Avetisyan, E.; Hockerts, K. 2017. The Consolidation of the ESG Rating Industry as an enactment of institutional retrogression, Business Strategy and the Environment 26(3): 316–330. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1919

Bajic, S.; Yurtoglu, B. 2018. CSR, market value and profitability: International evidence, in S. Boubaker, D. Cumming, D. K. Nguyen (Eds.). Research Handbook of Finance and Sustainability, 29–53. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786432636.00009

Balcaen, S.; Ooghe, H.; 2006. 35 years of studies on business failure: an overview of the classic statistical methodologies and their related problems, The British Accounting Review 38(1): 63–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2005.09.001

Battall, A. H.; Sabri, B. A.; Rasul, M. A. 2020. Analysis of common stocks and their impact on market value an applied study on the banking sector companies listed on Iraq stock exchange, Tikrit Journal of Administrative and Economic Sciences 16(49): 253–269. Available from Internet: https://www.iasj.net/iasj/article/179838 (in Arabic).

Besson, F.; Durand, C.; Miroudot, S. 2013. How much does offshoring matter? Evolution of imports and their relation to profits, labor, and firm′ strategies in France, 1990–2009, in A. Bardhan, D. Jaffee, C. Kroll (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Offshoring and Global Employment, 122–156. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765904.013.0006

Bose, S.; Khan, H. Z. 2022. Sustainable development goals (SDGs) reporting and the role of country-level institutional factors: an international evidence, Journal of Cleaner Production 335: 130290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.130290

Brzeziński, M.; Pyza, D. 2021. Carbon dioxide emission from diesel engine vehicles in intermodal transport, Transport 36(3): 246–259. https://doi.org/10.3846/transport.2021.15484

Chow, G. W. S.; Durand, R. B.; Koh, S. 2014. Are ethical investments good?, Australian Journal of Management 39(4): 645–665. https://doi.org/10.1177/0312896213516327

D’Angelo, V.; Cappa, F.; Peruffo, E. 2023. Green manufacturing for sustainable development: the positive effects of green activities, green investments, and non-green products on economic performance, Business Strategy and the Environment 32(4): 1900–1913. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3226

Danbolt, J.; Hirst, I. R. C.; Jones, E. 2011. The growth companies puzzle: can growth opportunities measures predict firm growth?, The European Journal of Finance 17(1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/13518470903448432

Dasgupta, P. 2007. The idea of sustainable development, Sustainability Science 2(1): 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-007-0024-y

De Souza Cunha, F. A. F.; Meira, E.; Orsato, R. J. 2021. Sustainable finance and investment: review and research agenda, Business Strategy and the Environment 30(8): 3821–3838. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2842

Dyllick, T.; Muff, K. 2016. Clarifying the meaning of sustainable business: introducing a typology from business-as-usual to true business sustainability, Organization & Environment 29(2): 156–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026615575176

Egorova, A. A.; Grishunin, S. V.; Karminsky, A. M. 2022. The impact of ESG factors on the performance of information technology companies, Procedia Computer Science 199: 399–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2022.01.041

El Hakioui, M.; Louitri, A. 2017. Paradigmatic debate on entrepreneurship and firm growth: essay on the positioning of high-growth, International Journal of Economics & Strategic Management of Business Process 8(1): 54–65.

Fatemi, A. M.; Fooladi, I. J. 2013. Sustainable finance: a new paradigm, Global Finance Journal 24(2): 101–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfj.2013.07.006

Friede, G.; Busch, T.; Bassen, A. 2015. ESG and financial performance: aggregated evidence from more than 2000 empirical studies, Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment 5(4): 210–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2015.1118917

Govindan, K.; Kilic, M.; Uyar, A.; Karaman, A. S. 2021. Drivers and value-relevance of CSR performance in the logistics sector: a cross-country firm-level investigation, International Journal of Production Economics 231: 107835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107835

Griškevičiūtė-Gečienė, A. 2010. The evaluation of investment projects within the territory of development, Transport 25(2): 203–214. https://doi.org/10.3846/transport.2010.25

Gündoğdu, H. G.; Aytekin, A.; Toptancı, Ş.; Korucuk, S.; Karamaşa, Ç. 2023. Environmental, social, and governance risks and environmentally sensitive competitive strategies: a case study of a multinational logistics company, Business Strategy and the Environment 32(7): 4874–4906. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3398

Halbritter, G.; Dorfleitner, G. 2015. The wages of social responsibility – where are they? A critical review of ESG investing, Review of Financial Economics 26(1): 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rfe.2015.03.004

Hamilton, J. T. 1995. Pollution as news: media and stock market reactions to the toxics release inventory data, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 28(1): 98–113. https://doi.org/10.1006/jeem.1995.1007

Hong, H.; Kacperczyk, M. 2009. The price of sin: the effects of social norms on markets, Journal of Financial Economics 93(1): 15–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2008.09.001

Huber, B. M.; Comstock, M. 2017. ESG reports and ratings: what they are, why they matter?, The Corporate Governance Advisor 25(5): 1–12.

Jamali, D.; Carroll, A. 2017. Capturing advances in CSR: developed versus developing country perspectives, Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility 26(4): 321–325. https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12157

Jensen, M. C. 2001. Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 14(3): 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6622.2001.tb00434.x

Jonwall, R.; Gupta, S.; Pahuja, S. 2022. Socially responsible investment behavior: a study of individual investors from India, Review of Behavioral Finance 15(6): 865–888. https://doi.org/10.1108/RBF-05-2021-0099

Kumar, S.; Sharma, D.; Rao, S.; Lim, W. M.; Mangla, S. K. 2022. Past, present, and future of sustainable finance: insights from big data analytics through machine learning of scholarly research, Annals of Operations Research (online first). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04410-8

Kuranovič, V.; Sokolovskij, E.; Bazaras, D.; Jarašūnienė, A.; Čižiūnienė, K. 2023. Estimating the intensity of cargo flows in warehouses by applying guanxi principles, Sustainability 15(23): 16226. https://doi.org/10.3390/su152316226

Lantos, G. P. 2001. The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility, Journal of Consumer Marketing 18(7): 595–632. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760110410281

Lins, K. V.; Servaes, H.; Tamayo, A. 2017. Social capital, trust, and firm performance: the value of corporate social responsibility during the financial crisis, Journal of Finance 72(4): 1785–1824. https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12505

Liu, W.; Wang, S.; Lin, Y.; Xie, D.; Zhang, J. 2020. Effect of intelligent logistics policy on shareholder value: Evidence from Chinese logistics companies, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 137: 101928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2020.101928

Mathiasson, M. H.; Jochumsen, H. 2022. Libraries, sustainability and sustainable development: a review of the research literature, Journal of Documentation 78(6): 1278–1304. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-11-2021-0226

Meira, E.; De Souza Cunha, F. A. F.; Orsato, R. J.; Miralles-Quirós, M. M.; Miralles-Quirós, J. L. 2023. The added value and differentiation among ESG investment strategies in stock markets, Business Strategy and the Environment 32(4): 1816–1834. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3221

Muhammad, N.; Scrimgeour, F. 2014. Stock returns and fundamentals in the Australian market, Asian Journal of Finance & Accounting 6(1): 271–290. https://doi.org/10.5296/ajfa.v6i1.5486

Naeem, M. A.; Yousaf, I.; Karim, S.; Tiwari, A. K.; Farid, S. 2023. Comparing asymmetric price efficiency in regional ESG markets before and during COVID-19, Economic Modelling 118: 106095. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2022.106095

Naffa, H.; Fain, M. 2022. A factor approach to the performance of ESG leaders and laggards, Finance Research Letters 44: 102073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2021.102073

Perez Liston, D.; Soydemir, G. 2010. Faith‐based and sin portfolios: an empirical inquiry into norm‐neglect vs norm‐conforming investor behavior, Managerial Finance 36(10): 876–885. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074351011070242

Schoenmaker, D.; Schramade, W. 2018. Principles of Sustainable Finance. Oxford University Press. 432 p.

Shanaev, S.; Ghimire, B. 2022. When ESG meets AAA: The effect of ESG rating changes on stock returns, Finance Research Letters 46: 102302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2021.102302

Szychta, A. 2022. Rola wytycznych UNCTAD−ISAR w monitorowaniu realizacji celów zrównoważonego rozwoju przez przedsiębiorstwa [The role of UNCTAD-ISAR guidance in monitoring the implementation of sustainable development goals by enterprises], Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości [Theoretical Journal of Accounting] 46(1): 67–99. https://doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0015.7989 (in Polish).

Tsang, Y. P.; Fan, Y.; Feng, Z. P. 2023. Bridging the gap: Building environmental, social and governance capabilities in small and medium logistics companies, Journal of Environmental Management 338: 117758. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117758

Uyar, A.; Karaman, A. S.; Kilic, M. 2020. Is corporate social responsibility reporting a tool of signaling or greenwashing? Evidence from the worldwide logistics sector, Journal of Cleaner Production 253: 119997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.119997

Wong, W. C.; Batten, J. A.; Ahmad, A. H.; Mohamed-Arshad, S. B.; Nordin, S.; Abdul Adzis, A. 2021. Does ESG certification add firm value?, Finance Research Letters 39: 101593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101593

Ye, C.; Song, X.; Liang, Y. 2022. Corporate sustainability performance, stock returns, and ESG indicators: fresh insights from EU member states, Environmental Science and Pollution Research 29(58): 87680–87691. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20789-8

Yu, E. P.-Y.; Guo, C. Q.; Luu, B. V. 2018. Environmental, social and governance transparency and firm value, Business Strategy and the Environment 27(7): 987–1004. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2047