ESG and firm resilience: a sprint or a marathon?

Abstract

Resilience is at the forefront in companies striving to build immunity against adverse shocks. Insurance through ESG is the focus of much research, yet it has thus far been dominated by a static and insufficient characterization of the diversity of ESG patterns across companies. We reconcile prior mixed evidence by embracing a longitudinally relative approach and by accounting for two aspects of a firm’s ESG engagement: its degree of regularity over time (ESG consistency), and the extent to which each firm reallocates its ESG engagement across pillars (ESG adaptability). We examine how these characteristics of ESG affect firm resilience, split into two dimensions: stability (the severity of economic loss), and flexibility (time to recovery). Using a sample of U.S. listed firms, our empirical context is the COVID-19 shock. Our evidence suggests that ESG consistency and ESG adaptability improve resilience stability, but that they have no significant impact on flexibility. We further find that such dynamic aspects of ESG become more important vis-à-vis strengthening the resilience of poorer ESG-engaged companies, for which signalling the sincerity of their ESG actions plays a crucial role in prompting stakeholder support. Overall, this evidence is consistent with the view that ESG engagement is a long-term commitment in terms of providing a pay-off for firms.