ESG责任履行利于企业核心竞争力提升吗？

刘 刚　王 杰
（南开大学）  

 

内容提要：核心竞争力提升是增强中国企业全球竞争力的重要抓手。基于2009—2022年中国沪深两市A股上市公司的数据，本文从理论和实证方面探讨环境、社会和治理（ESG）责任履行对企业核心竞争力的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明，ESG责任履行能够促进企业核心竞争力提升，主要通过融资约束缓解效应、研发投入增强效应和人力资本提高效应三种机制产生影响。拓展研究发现，ESG责任履行有助于增强企业绿色核心竞争力。为此，政府需要引导企业深化ESG责任履行，疏通ESG责任履行提升核心竞争力的渠道，推动ESG责任履行与政府环境规制共同促进企业绿色转型。

关键词：ESG责任履行；核心竞争力；融资约束；研发投入；人力资本；绿色核心竞争力

作者简介：刘刚，南开大学经济学院教授、博士生导师，天津，300071；王杰，南开大学经济学院博士研究生，通信作者。

基金项目：中国工程院战略研究与咨询项目“场景创新驱动的人工智能技术升级和产业发展路径研究”（2023-HY-11）

引用格式：刘刚,王杰.ESG责任履行利于企业核心竞争力提升吗?[J].经济与管理研究,2024,45(7):18-33.DOI:10.13502/j.cnki.issn1000-7636.2024.07.002.

Is ESG Responsibility Fulfillment Beneficial to Corporate Core Competitiveness?

LIU Gang, WANG Jie

(Nankai University, Tianjin 300071)

Abstract: The enhancement of core competitiveness is a crucial lever for China to break through the key bottleneck technologies and strengthen enterprises’ global competitiveness. Against the backdrop of increasing emphasis, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibility fulfillment is becoming a strategic factor in enhancing corporate core competitiveness. Based on the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2009 to 2022, this paper discusses the relationship between ESG responsibility fulfillment and corporate core competitiveness, along with its mechanisms.

The findings show that ESG responsibility fulfillment significantly enhances core competitiveness by improving existing and potential core competitiveness levels. The mechanism is that ESG responsibility fulfillment affects corporate core competitiveness mainly through three channels: alleviating financing constraints, enhancing R&D investment, and improving human capital. Facing fierce market competition, actively fulfilling ESG responsibilities and safeguarding stakeholders’ interests can resolve information asymmetry and principal-agent problems and comprehensively improve production efficiency and innovation capabilities. Extended research indicates that ESG responsibility fulfillment can improve enterprises’ green core competitiveness and drive their green transformation, which is crucial for achieving the strategic goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality (“dual carbon” goals) and high-quality development. At the same time, the promotion effect of ESG responsibility fulfillment on green core competitiveness is mainly achieved by green technological innovation, which provides a key focus for enterprises to explore green transformation. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should guide enterprises to deepen ESG responsibility fulfillment, unblock the channels to enhance core competitiveness, and promote ESG responsibility fulfillment and government environmental regulation to complement each other, so as to jointly promote the green transformation of enterprises.

The marginal contributions are threefold. First, this paper integrates ESG responsibility fulfillment and core competitiveness into the same analytical framework, which enriches the research on the economic effects of ESG responsibility fulfillment and provides a new analytical perspective for improving core competitiveness. Second, in terms of the mechanism, this paper proposes and verifies three channels by which ESG responsibility fulfillment enhances core competitiveness, which provides insights for enterprises to achieve long-term development. Third, this paper constructs a core competitiveness indicator by integrating existing and potential core competitiveness levels, providing a new approach to the quantitative analysis of core competitiveness. It further constructs green core competitiveness indicators, confirming that ESG responsibility fulfillment helps enterprises pursue green technology upgrades, enhance their green core competitiveness, and foster experience and confidence to achieve green transformation.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; new quality productive forces; high-quality development; digital intelligence; a new system for mobilizing resources nationwide

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