Kurumsal sürdürülebilirlik performansının belirleyicileri ve firma değerine etkisi

Abstract

Corporate sustainability is the adaptation of the principals of corporate governance to firm operations and decision-making processes with economic, environmental and social factors in order to create long term value and to manage risks that might come to exist. Sustainability indices are generated in capital markets in order to help existing and potential investors for their evaluation of this process in their investment decisions. This study aims to determine the firm characteristics of the 77 firms listed in BIST 100 index (except financial firms and sport clubs) and in the meanwhile listed in BIST Sustainability Index for the period November 2014-October 2018. In addition, the impact of listing in BIST Sustainability Index on firm value is investigated. According to the results of logistic regression, firm size, return on equity, leverage, market to book ratio and asset turnover are positively and significantly related with sustainability dummy variable. Hence, firms with bigger size have higher probability of listing in sustainability index. These firms are listed in sustainability index because of their high level of public scrutiny and therefore low level of reporting costs. The positive relation between return on assets and sustainability dummy variable might be explained by the idea that the managers of the high profitability firms' willingness to present information. They can show their ability to increase the shareholders' wealth by presenting information. Furthermore, the firms with higher leverage ratios prefer to present more information in order to decrease the agency costs. Therefore, the probability of to be listed in the sustainability index is higher for them. The positive relation between growth opportunities and sustainability dummy variable is a result of these firms' willingness to make innovation or the higher level of diversification strategies which include sustainability principles. A positive relation is found between sustainability dummy variable and asset turnover variable. Their active working and their higher turnover are resulted in higher earning potential. Thus, they will have higher probability to be listed in sustainability index. On the other hand, the factors that impact the firm value is tested with two stage least squares method. A positive relation is found between Tobin's Q and sustainability dummy variable. As a result, it is founded that the firms which shows sustainability improvement and report these improvements, might have higher values in financial markets and might be rewarded by investors.