Integrating Sustainability into Corporate Financial Management

Abstract

Companies’ sustainable management decisions are among the most important tools in supporting relevant business perspectives. This study identifies and evaluates how companies in the Baltic region integrate sustainability into their financial management, a vital question given the increasing attention to social responsibility. The object of the research is corporate ESG disclosure and the correlation between the net profit of companies in the Baltic states, CO 2 emissions, and environmental investment. We apply comparative, systematic, correlation, and graphical methods to achieve the study’s objective. The results of our correlation analysis show that there is a mostly negative correlation between net profit and CO 2 emissions; that is, a decrease in pollution from a company’s activities can increase its profits or vice versa. The correlation analysis also shows that the net profits of Lithuanian and Estonian companies are more strongly correlated with CO 2 emissions than with environmental investments. The opposite trend is observed for Latvian companies. The analysis of general trends in corporate social responsibility shows that the level of corporate-social-responsibility discouragement varies by country and sector.