ESG 명성의 책임: ESG 우수기업의 위기 대응 전략에 대한 연구

This study explores whether ESG excellence acts as a shield for companies or not in crisis and whether ESG excellence has a buffering effect when considering response strategies. The prior results that pre-crisis reputation has a positive effect on post-crisis corporate evaluation mainly measure corporate evaluation immediately after the crisis without considering a company's response during the crisis. It is necessary to consider the company's response when exploring the buffering effect of reputation on corporate evaluation in a crisis. This study explores whether ESG reputation has a buffering effect, reducing the decline of the corporate evaluation in a crisis when considering a company’s response strategies, and whether the effect varies depending on the response strategies. The extent of accepting the responsibility of a crisis is manipulated as the response strategies. Through experiments, this study explores the effect of ESG excellence on corporate evaluation after the response of a company. Second, this study explores the effect of responsible strategies and finally, how the effect of ESG excellence depends on the responsible strategies of a company then why. The experiment has shown that the effect of ESG excellence depends on corporate responses. The corporate evaluation after crisis response is not significantly different according to ESG's excellence and inferiority. And the company’s responsible response to crisis reduces the decline in corporate evaluation. ESG excellence of a company combined with a high-responsibility strategy reduces the decline in corporate evaluation. However, the evaluation of an ESG excellent company with a low-responsibility strategy declines like that of an ESG inferior company. A low-responsibility strategy of a company with excellent ESG violates consumers’ expectations for ESG, leading to a decline in the company’s evaluation. Excellent ESG companies should respond responsibly to the crisis in line with their reputation so far, though the effect of a responsible response is smaller than that of inferior ESG companies. That is the way to meet stakeholder expectations and maintain the company’s evaluation.