This study examines the impact of corporate sustainability practices on firm performance, sustainable development, and value by focusing on ESG performance, sustainability committees, and sustainability reporting. While prior literature documents a general association between ESG performance and firm value, limited attention has been paid to the role of sustainability governance structures and their contribution to sustainable development outcomes, particularly SDGs disclosure, in a multi-country setting. Sustainable development is proxied by an SDGs disclosure index constructed using firm-level disclosures aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals based on LSEG (Refinitiv) ESG item-level data. The analysis controls for firm size, leverage, profitability, industry-, and country-level institutional factors to ensure robust results. Using panel data comprising 36,438 firm-year observations from 6073 companies across OECD member countries from 2017 to 2022, this study employs a fixed-effects model based on diagnostic tests, including the Hausman and Breusch–Pagan tests. The findings revealed that higher ESG performance scores positively influence both sustainable development outcomes and market value. Moreover, the presence of sustainability committees and broader sustainability reporting further strengthens these relationships. These results highlight the importance of institutional sustainability governance in translating ESG commitments into measurable firm values and SDG-related outcomes. This study provides novel empirical evidence on how sustainability-focused governance mechanisms enhance corporate contributions to sustainable development, offering important implications for managers and policymakers as well as directions for future research.

This research examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and perceived financial performance (FP) in the Saudi Arabian banking industry using the mediating variables of employee engagement (EE) and green creativity (GC). This study is based on the Social Identity Theory and considers CSR as an engine to produce ethical and social results and promote environmental innovation and sustainable competitiveness. According to a survey of 650 banking employees and structural equation modeling (SEM), the results show that CSR significantly and positively affects EE, GC, and FP, with EE having the strongest mediating role. These conclusions highlight the strategic consequence of CSR in advancing sustainability by balancing financial performance, employee welfare, and environmental innovation. This study adds value to the existing body of research because it provides information on the CSR-FP relationship in a developing economy, where such information is scarcely available. Consistent with the definition of sustainability, this study indicates how CSR activities combine social, environmental, and economic aspects to foster long-term organizational sustainability and sustainable development.

In the context of global climate issues and the transition towards sustainable development, this study examines the relationship between environmental cost, public expenditure, energy structure, and institutional quality in Saudi Arabia over the period 1994–2023, where environmental cost is proxied by the carbon intensity of GDP. To capture both long-run relationships and short-run dynamics, the study applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)-Error Correction Model (ECM) framework. The results confirm the existence of a stable long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. Public expenditure and energy use significantly increase carbon intensity, indicating that fiscal expansion and energy intensity remain important sources of environmental pressure. In contrast, renewable electricity generation and improvements in institutional quality significantly reduce carbon intensity, highlighting the importance of clean energy deployment and effective governance. Economic growth exhibits a small but statistically significant negative effect on carbon intensity, suggesting gradual progress toward relative decoupling between economic activity and environmental cost. The error-correction coefficient indicates rapid adjustment toward the long-run equilibrium following short-run shocks. These findings provide policy-relevant evidence for aligning fiscal policy, energy transition strategies, and institutional reforms with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and broader sustainability objectives in resource-dependent economies.