Risks and Corporate Sustainable Investment: Perspectives of Corporate Top Management

Abstract

Developing countries, especially, are still confronting remarkable challenges in ensuring sustainable development. Numerous industries are still not feeling guilty in producing negative spillover effects, affecting thousands of people and numbers of casualty. It is critical to delve into the roots, especially on risks or uncertainty, pushing the industries into sustainable development, directly from the perspectives of corporate decision-makers or top management themselves; i.e. the Chief Executive Officers. The objective of this paper is to examine how significant the uncertainty or risk, as well as the integration of other possible causes: aspects and criteria, in enhancing the effectiveness of the corporations in their sustainable investment. Other possible causes include religiosity and behavioural biases, government roles, institutional pressures and competitive or industrial surroundings. The model will be used to examine which core factors affect the investment by decision-makers for sustainable development and its dimensions: environment, social, and governance. Applying the Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method based on Fuzzy Delphi to handle the interrelationships among the attributes, this paper would be able to make a recommendation on the effective actions and policies to be taken by the relevant parties in enhancing corporate sustainable investments. The model is integrating institutional theory, behavioural theory and real options theory which have been studied separately before and have not produced comprehensive results. The findings of the risks and other related drivers affecting sustainable investment would be beneficial to policymakers in strategizing appropriate measures to enhance corporate sustainability so that sustainable development goal 2030 will be easily & effectively achieved, especially in developing countries, like Malaysia.