Below is an excerpt from ISS ESG’s thought leadership paper “The Hidden Significance of Shareholder Proposals.” The full paper is available for download from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) online library.
This analysis captures change in corporate sustainability practices using the ISS ESG Corporate Rating, which holistically assesses environmental, social, and governance performance across hundreds of industry-specific indicators. The study compares companies’ sustainability performance before and after they received an environmental or social shareholder proposal (including proposals that were later withdrawn) over the last six years for 2,200 widely held US companies.
By Sean McPhillips, Associate, ESG Analytics, ISS ESG
