A sand cone model of sustainability performance: an empirical analysis

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between environmental, social and financial performance. In particular, based on the literature, we hypothesise the existence of a ‘sand cone’ model of sustainability that implies cumulative and sequential effects among the three performance dimensions. The hypothesis is tested using the fixed effects model on a longitudinal dataset of secondary data covering the period 2010–2019. The dataset includes 661 companies operating in the manufacturing industry and located in Europe, North America and Asia. The findings show that environmental, social and financial performance do not conflict but cumulate. The sequence of performance improvements that outlines a ‘sand cone’ starts with environmental sustainability and ends with financial performance, while social performance fully mediates the relationship between the two. Any other sequence is not confirmed by the data. These results are however valid only in Western countries (i.e. Europe and North America). Based on these findings, this research informs managers that the three pillars of sustainability have a cumulative effect, but only if a specific implementation sequence is followed. However, managers should be aware that these cumulative effects need some time to show up.

本研究旨在阐明环境绩效、社会绩效与财务绩效三者间的关联关系。具体而言，基于既有文献，本文提出假设：存在一种‘沙锥（sand cone）’可持续性模型，该模型暗含三类绩效维度间存在累积性与序列性效应。本研究采用固定效应模型，基于覆盖2010-2019年的二手数据纵向数据集对上述假设进行检验。该数据集涵盖欧洲、北美及亚洲地区共661家制造业企业。研究结果表明，环境绩效、社会绩效与财务绩效并非相互冲突，而是呈现累积效应。呈现‘沙锥’形态的绩效改进序列始于环境可持续性建设，终于财务绩效提升，且社会绩效在二者间发挥完全中介作用，其余任何改进序列均未得到数据支持。但上述研究结果仅在西方国家（即欧洲与北美地区）成立。基于上述研究结果，本研究可为管理者提供参考：可持续发展三大支柱存在累积效应，但需遵循特定的实施顺序方可显现。不过管理者需注意，此类累积效应的显现需要一定时间周期。