Does corporate sustainability practices have an impact on financial performance: A study based on BIST manufacturing firms

Purpose-Corporate Sustainability notion has become very important in recent years with sustainable development, which is defined as fulfillment of current needs without risking fulfillment of future generations' needs. Especially in the last two decades, the relationship between financial performance and corporate sustainability has been questioned extensively in large masses particularly business and academic world. The purpose of this study is to analyze the corporate sustainability practices and its impact on financial performance. Methodology -It focuses on relationship between corporate sustainability practices and financial performance. In order to reach this aim corporate sustainability checklist is established and companies are classified according to their sustainability levels. Publicly traded companies from BIST 100 (excluding finance sector) are used as a sample. Data is gathered from theirs annual reports for the years between 2012-2017. Findings-MANOVA analysis is used to analyze the relationship between the sustainability levels and the financial performance indicators. The results implied that sustainability levels have statistically significant effect between the group means of 3 variables. These are Current Ratio, Gross Profit Margin and Corporate Governance Index. For Current Ratio variable, there is a significant difference between sustainable and least sustainable category for 10 % significance level. For CG Index variable, there is a significant difference between most sustainable and sustainable category and most sustainable and least sustainable category for 5 % significance level. For Gross Profit Margin variable, there is a significant difference between most sustainable and sustainable category for 5 % significance level.