Three Essays on ESG and Corporate Management

Abstract

This dissertation deals with ESG and corporate management in ESG consulting related to corporate management. It consists of three papers comparing ESG evaluation methods, TCFD, and CEO Non-Duality. The first essay compares domestic and international ESG evaluation methods through the K-ESG guidelines. ESG diagnostic items that were not covered in previous studies were directly applied to corporates to measure the ease of application of the K-ESG guidelines, and the results of the evaluation to compare with domestic and international ESG ratings held by the corporate to study the appropriateness and location of the K-ESG guidelines. As a result, the ESG rating of the K-ESG guidelines was lower than Refinitiv among global ESG rating agencies, higher than MSCI, and lower than or similar to that of KCGS, a domestic ESG evaluation institution. In addition, the ease of application of the K-ESG guidelines was high. The second essay compares the efficiency of each group of corporates engaged in ESG management using a meta-frontier that uses TCFD scores and ESG ratings as input and output variables. Although studies on TCFD scores and corporate efficiency in Korea on greenhouse gas (GHG) topics are rare, this study compared the efficiency of different industries, such as financial corporates, non-financial corporates, and non-financial public corporates, using the meta-frontier. The order of meta-frontier efficiency under VRS was financial corporates (99.5%), non-financial public corporates (96.2%), and non-financial corporates (95.0%). The cause of inefficiency was pure technical efficiency in all three groups. The third essay examines whether the performance of corporates implementing CEO Non-Duality is improved. Propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-differences (DID) were used to compare the value one year before and the average values three years after the implementation of the policy, and productivity changes over five years were measured using the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). As a result of the study obtained through the PSM-DID analysis, although a direct causal relationship between CEO Non-Duality and corporate performance improvement could not be proven, this study showed the possibility that appointing an outside director as the chairman of the board of directors(CBD) could have a positive effect on corporate performance. It is necessary to appropriately adjust the company's management strategy and organizational culture and strengthen outside directors' roles in electing board members. The contributions of this study are as follows. The first essay will show the role of context in ESG evaluation and how important it is to consider the context and suggest to the academic community the need for a standardized ESG evaluation method and examples that can be successfully applied. In addition, it implied that the government's role in promoting ESG evaluation is essential. The second essay compared the efficiency of ESG management activities of financial and non-financial corporates using TCFD guidance to previous studies that did not compare the efficiency of different industries. In addition, TCFD scores and ESG ratings, which were not previously used as input and output variables, were used to contribute to the academic development of the field. The third essay verifies the implementation effect through PSM-DID analysis of corporates that have implemented CEO Non-Duality among listed corporates in Korea and those that have not and used Malmquist (MPI), which was not used in previous studies, as a result of PSM-DID. It is an academic contribution to use as a method of additional verification.