Looking for ways to measure ESG factors

Investors seem to want more information about corporate environmental, social, and governance issues but find that traditional accounting metrics fall short. According to the IRRC Institute, a research firm on responsible investment issues, investors find it difficult to gather let alone analyse corporate ESG data. Companies, meanwhile, suffer from "survey fatigue". The IRRC therefore commissioned a study to provide a comprehensive analysis of which corporate ESG information is tracked by companies and how it is or is not consistent with analogous information sought by investors, research companies and others. It found that:

• Agreement on issues, not metrics: There is agreement on key corporate sustainability issues, but not on the metrics used to measure the management of them, nor on the purposes served by examining corporate ESG information.
• Lack of reporting: Few companies report all the ESG information they collect internally.
• Focus on risk mitigation: ESG researchers, investors, and corporate representatives approach ESG issues from a risk mitigation perspective, not a value creation perspective.

Source document: The IRRC report "Finding Common Ground on the Metrics that Matter," by consultants Peter Soyka and Mark Bateman, is a 79-page pdf file.