Sustainability and profitability efficiencies: the moderating role of corporate social responsibility

Abstract To develop a better way of assessing the sustainability efficiency (SE) and profitability efficiency (PE) of mining multinational enterprises (MNEs), the two‐stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) network model is proposed. The study shows that slack‐based models (SBM) can strengthen the previous and present measurements of the mining industry. When we assess the SE and PE of 53 mining MNEs from 2016 to 2019, the overall efficiencies of both the sustainability and profitability of mining MNEs are not higher than 70%. Such results are shown to be helpful for suggesting that global mining companies need to improve their efficiencies. This study addresses filling the research gap in the literature review about SE positively and significantly influencing PE with the moderating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in mining MNEs. The result reveals that higher sustainability yields higher returns to the companies. In other words, MNEs have improved their SE to achieve a higher PE. Furthermore, the value of SE significantly influences PE regardless of whether the moderating effect, CSR, is higher or lower. The results show that a higher governance pillar score (GPS) and social pillar score (SPS) lead them to have greater profitability. However, a higher Environmental Pillar Score (EPS) tends to create a weaker relationship between SE and PE. We addressed a few interpretations of why higher EPS negatively influences profitability. Nevertheless, our study strongly recommends companies to increase their CSR score. Last, this study proves that all hypotheses are supported.