ESG 활동이 생산과 생산효율에 미치는 영향

This study seeks to reflect the multifaceted nature of corporate value creation by regarding a company’s ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) evaluation results as an additional output. For this purpose, the researchers combined financial and ESG data of 111 Korean listed firms included in the KOSPI200 over the period 2012-2023, and estimated a multi-output production function using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). The analysis reveals that as ESG performance improves, the efficiency of creating value-added is temporarily undermined. This suggests that activities undertaken to respond to ESG evaluations-such as resource allocation, governance improvements, and stronger disclosure-may elevate costs and reduce productivity in the short term. Comparing firms by size, mid-sized enterprises achieved the highest production efficiency, indicating that they can simultaneously avoid the complex internal governance structures of large corporations and the resource constraints of small businesses while maintaining a balanced approach to value-added and ESG performance. Moreover, the study identified a dilemma in which large corporations, despite allocating more resources to ESG initiatives, face diminishing marginal improvements in ESG scores. By redefining ESG not as a traditional CSR activity or mere cost factor, but as a fundamental output of corporate operations, this study provides implications for corporate valuation and strategy in an era of mandatory ESG disclosures. Through a quantitative estimation of multi-output production functions that include ESG performance in an SFA framework, the study elucidates the specific effects of ESG activities on corporate production efficiency and explains the divergent outcomes by firm size. The results also highlight the need for size-differentiated ESG support for companies and a more refined ESG evaluation framework.