Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparison between manufacturing and banking sectors with regards to the level of sustainability reporting (environmental, social and governance (ESG)) and its impact on operational, financial and market performance. Design/methodology/approach The research is quantitative, based on pooled data analysis of 932 manufactures and 530 banks listed on 80 countries for ten years from 2008 to 2017 ending up with 11,705 observations. A multivariate model is used to investigate the impact of sustainability reporting (ESG) on a firm’s performance. The theoretical model is built on agency, legitimacy, resources and stakeholders’ theories. The practical model is built on independent variable (ESG) and the dependent variables (return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q ). Findings The findings deduced from the empirical results on one hand demonstrated that ESG positively affect the operational, financial and market performance in the manufacturing sector. However, on the other hand, the ESG negatively affect the operational, financial and market performance in the banking sector. Originality/value This research makes a contribution to the scarce literature and compares the level of sustainability reporting and its impact on performance in both the manufacturing and banking sector which are two of the major and important sectors in the global financial markets.
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