What are the main determinants for companies to behave in sustainable way?

Abstract

Using a novel dataset collected from a web survey sent out to Swedish large companies, this thesis examines whether institutional factors or basic economic factors are the main determinants for companies’ level of sustainability work. This is done through studying a company’s level of corporate sustainability in relation to their self-perceived determinants. OLS analysis is used to estimate the parameters. The results indicate that the institutional factors have a stronger positive relationship with the level of corporate sustainability than the basic economic factors. This raises important questions and addresses the need for further research on corresponding time-related effects as well as complementary empirical studies with a different dataset.