Sales Revenues and Corporate Sustainability Performance: an Efficiency Analysis of the 20 Top Companies Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Abstract

Abstract Research background Generally, corporate sustainability studies focus on identifying the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and corporate financial performance among different companies without measuring the company’s efficiency based on sustainability pillar scores. Purpose The essential aim of this paper is to explain the differentiation of business efficiency in terms of corporate sustainability performance by answering the question of how sustainability pillar scores influence the relative efficiency of a company? Research methodology The empirical studies were conducted among the 20 top companies listed on the WSE for the period of 2019–2021 with the use of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Results The research hypothesis, which states that more efficient companies are characterized by a higher level of sustainability in all its particular dimensions, cannot be positively verified, because a positive and statistically significant correlation dependence between the average efficiency measure and average sustainability pillar scores existed only for the governance dimension. Novelty The estimation of efficiency measure based on corporate sustainability performance has included not only environmental, social and governance dimensions, but also the economic one, which was represented by the long-term returns pillar score.