Concerns remain about how companies will reconcile environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues with their core mandates. This is one reason why many organisations did not initially subscribe to sustainable investing, reporting and accounting, especially where it is not mandatory, despite growing stakeholder pressure to do so. This paper examines how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with social and commercial mandates in South Africa, where sustainability reporting is mandatory, balance ESG practices and financial sustainability to fulfil their mandates. This article proposes and evaluates propositions about SOEs adopting and reporting ESG components using a survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with important SOE stakeholders to show that its sustainability accounting approach benefits policy and non-policy observers. More than half of the studied SOEs have embraced and disclosed their ESG practices, yet there appears to be no systematic way in which they balance ESG practices and financial sustainability, resulting in conflict. This paper appears to be the first SOE study on this topic. In this regard, this study offers novel insights into how sustainability practices may be incorporated into the social and commercial objectives of SOEs, which in most cases are conflicting, while still allowing SOEs to be financially sustainable and depend less on state bailouts, which is often the case, especially in Africa and in countries that face a high level of corruption. Considering the characteristics and mandates of SOEs, part of being socially responsible is utilising public resources in the form of taxpayers’ money in an efficient, effective and accountable manner. The discussion in this paper indicates that paying attention to ESG issues is part of a broader accountability mechanism expected from SOEs. Also, the choice of South Africa and of SOEs in South Africa has implications for theory and practice since SOEs in South Africa have social and commercial objectives such that they are expected to be agents of social responsibility.

中文翻译：

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管理国有企业环境、社会、治理和财务可持续性之间的权衡：来自新兴市场的见解

人们仍然担心公司如何协调环境、社会和治理（ESG）问题与其核心使命。这是许多组织最初不支持可持续投资、报告和会计的原因之一，特别是在非强制性的情况下，尽管利益相关者要求这样做的压力越来越大。本文探讨了南非具有社会和商业使命的国有企业（SOE）如何平衡 ESG 实践和财务可持续性以履行其使命，其中可持续发展报告是强制性的。本文通过调查问卷和对重要国有企业利益相关者的半结构化访谈，提出并评估了关于国有企业采用和报告 ESG 要素的主张，以表明其可持续发展会计方法有利于政策和非政策观察者。超过一半的接受研究的国有企业已经接受并披露了其 ESG 实践，但它们似乎没有系统性的方法来平衡 ESG 实践和财务可持续性，从而导致了冲突。本文似乎是第一篇关于该主题的国有企业研究。在这方面，本研究提供了关于如何将可持续发展实践纳入国有企业的社会和商业目标的新颖见解，这些目标在大多数情况下是相互冲突的，同时仍然允许国有企业实现财务可持续性并减少对国家救助的依赖，而国家救助往往是这种情况尤其是在非洲和腐败严重的国家。考虑到国有企业的特点和任务，社会责任的一部分是以纳税人的钱的形式以高效、有效和负责任的方式利用公共资源。本文的讨论表明，关注 ESG 问题是国有企业期望的更广泛问责机制的一部分。此外，南非和南非国有企业的选择对理论和实践都有影响，因为南非国有企业具有社会和商业目标，因此人们期望它们成为社会责任的代理人。