The Co-Inhibiting Effect of Managerial Myopia on ESG Performance-Based Green Investment and Continuous Innovation

Abstract

Under the new pattern of “double carbon” development, good ESG performance is the best way to promote the sustainable development of enterprises, and ESG investment strategies are directly affected by the strategic vision of managers. Based on the upper echelons theory and stakeholder theory, this paper selected Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2022 as samples to empirically analyze the impact of managerial myopia on corporate ESG performance. The results show that managerial myopia significantly inhibits corporate ESG performance, mainly by inhibiting corporate green investment and green innovation sustainability. Furthermore, for state-owned enterprises (SOE), heavy polluting enterprises (HPE), and non-high-tech enterprises, the inhibitory effect of manager myopia on ESG performance is stronger. When the enterprise is in the growth stage, the above inhibition effect is more severe. For external governance, the greater the analyst attention and public environmental attention are, the more conducive they are to alleviating the restraining effect of managerial myopia on enterprise ESG performance. Therefore, effectively improving the cognition level of managers with regard to long- versus short-term profitability and strengthening external supervision are important measures for comprehensively optimizing ESG performance.