Igor' S. DEMINInstitute of Financial and Industrial Policy, Financial University under Government of Russian Federation, Moscow, Russian Federation ig.demin@gmail.com ORCID id: not available
Subject. The article addresses corporate governance in the context of the ESG agenda, industry ratings of companies. Objectives. The study aims to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and industry differentiation of the corporate governance index among Russian companies, identify the key factors influencing its change. Methods. The study employs the text mining method to process data on a sample of 132 Russian companies for 2014–2023, natural language processing (NLP) methods, including lexical approaches and machine learning, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a statistical thematic modeling method that is used to extract hidden topics from large sets of text data. Results. We established a steady upward trend in the corporate governance index 2020. The categories of "information disclosure" and "risk management" showed the greatest growth. The leading positions were taken by companies in the metallurgical and gold mining sectors, such as Severstal and Buryatzoloto. This indicates their adaptability to changes in the regulatory environment and the introduction of best practices. Conclusions. The study confirms the hypothesis about positive impact of the quality of corporate governance on the adaptive potential of companies. The revealed industry differentiation highlights the need to consider the specifics of sectors when developing ESG strategies. The findings can be used by companies to optimize corporate practices, taking into account industry specifics, by investors to assess ESG risks, and by regulatory authorities to develop standards for sustainable development.
Keywords: ESG ratings, text analysis, corporate governance, sustainable development, industry ratings
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