Quality and environmental management systems as business tools to enhance ESG performance: a cross-regional empirical study

The growing societal and political focus on sustainability at global level is pressurizing companies to enhance their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance to satisfy respective stakeholder needs and ensure sustained business success. With a data sample of 4292 companies from Europe, East Asia and North America, this work aims to prove through a cross-regional empirical study that quality management systems (QMSs) and environmental management systems (EMSs) represent powerful business tools to achieve this enhanced ESG performance. Descriptive and cluster analyses reveal that firms with QMSs and/or EMSs accomplish statistically significant higher ESG scores than companies without such management systems (MSs). Furthermore, the results indicate that operating both types of MSs simultaneously increases performance in the environmental and social pillar even further, while the governance dimension appears to be affected mainly by the adoption of EMSs alone. To the best of the authors' knowledge, such large-scale, cross-regional analysis of the impact of QMSs and EMSs on ESG performance is absent from the literature, thus paving the way for pioneering academic research. The study is grounded in stakeholder theory and demonstrates managers how the implementation of MSs can assist in successfully translating stakeholders' sustainability concerns into actionable business practice. Furthermore, it allows decision-makers to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of QMSs and EMSs for tackling specific ESG issues and highlights the performance advantages of combining both MSs. The work also depicts policymakers how corporate sustainable performance (CSP) can be improved by fostering MSs adoption, thereby emphasizing the importance of supporting and facilitating the diffusion of these systems.