Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

Pathways to Materiality: How Sustainability Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors

by Jean Rogers and George Serafeim

Abstract

As sustainability issues, also labelled environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, become financially material, companies, investors, and regulators are designing strategies and policies to improve sustainability disclosure and performance. In this paper, we outline a framework of how sustainability issues become financially material arguing that materiality is not a “state of being” but a “process of becoming.” Our framework could assist companies and investors to make resource allocation decisions based on expectations about future materiality, social entrepreneurs and NGOs to develop their theories of social change, and policy makers to design disclosure regulations. Moreover, our framework generates predictions about the conditions under which sustainability issues become financial material that could be empirically tested in the future.

Keywords: materiality; ESG; Pharmaceutical Companies; Business ethics; sustainability; environment; finance; accounting; disclosure; disclosure and access; regulation; social impact; valuation; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Resource Allocation;

Language: English Format: Print 29 pages SSRN Read Now

Citation:

Rogers, Jean, and George Serafeim. "Pathways to Materiality: How Sustainability Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-056, November 2019.

About the Author

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George Serafeim
Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration
Accounting and Management

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