Bærekraft som en integrert del av forretningsstrategien: En empirisk studie av sammenhengen mellom bærekraftsintegrasjon og finansiell prestasjon i norske børsnoterte selskaper

Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationship between corporate sustainability and corporate financial performance in the Norwegian stock market during the period 2019-2024. Moreover, the thesis seeks to operationalise how firms integrate sustainability into their corporate strategy and how this affects their financial performance. Lastly, the thesis investigates if this relationship varies across industries. Corporate sustainability is operationalised through Sustainalytics ESG risk ratings, where lower ratings indicate a better sustainability integration. Financial performance is measured both accounting-based and market-based, including Tobins Q, Jensens alpha, ROA and ROE. The thesis applies multiple linear regressions with fixed effects on a panel dataset including 85 Norwegian listed firms. This study contributes to the existing literature by using a risk-based metric for ESG-performance and by expanding ESG–CFP research into a Nordic context. The methodical procedure included a deductive approach by constructing null hypotheses stating no relationship between a firms ESG risk rating and financial performance, and no variations across industries. The statistical model finds a significant positive relationship between sustainability and financial performance for three out of four main models, including Tobins Q, Jensens alpha, and ROE. The positive relationship indicates that firms with high ESG-risk perform better financially, which contradicts much of the existing literature and the main hypothesis in this study. However, for the industry-level models the study only find significance in 5 out of 28 models. The relationship was positive for the technology and telecommunication industry, as well as for the health industry. For basic materials the relationship was negative, which supports the thesis main hypothesis. The thesis concludes that firms with an integrated sustainability strategy is not necessarily associated with higher financial performance compared to firms that treat sustainability separately in the Norwegian market, from either an accounting-based or market-based perspective. The thesis also concludes that the relationship between an integrated sustainability strategy and financial performance varies across sectors in the Norwegian market from 2019-2024.