The determinants of corporate sustainability performance evidence from Borsa İstanbul

Corporate sustainability, which is considered to be the concept of sustainability in enterprises, covers the sustainability of the existence of social, environmental and economic assets in the process of meeting the needs of the current and future stakeholders, and the fulfillment of the responsibilities that this vision will impose on the enterprises. In this study, whether businesses are included in the Borsa Istanbul Sustainability Index is determined as an indicator of their corporate sustainability performance. In this context, it was aimed to investigate how the sustainability performances of 63 nonfinancial institutions operating in Borsa Istanbul between 2014-2018 were affected by their ownership structure, corporate governance structure and company characteristics. In this respect, the panel logit - probit model, which is the most suitable method for the data set of the study, was preferred. As a result of the analyzes performed, positive and significant relationships were found between the ratio of independent board members, foreign ownership, corporate ownership and board size and corporate sustainability performances. On the other hand, no significant relationship was found between family ownership, public ownership, CEO duality and the ratio of female board members and corporate governance performance, which are expected to affect sustainability performance. In addition, control variables such as firm size, leverage, firm age, sector and corporate governance index, which are compatible with the literature, were used and added to the tested models. Adding the control variables to the models did not change the results.