Exploring the sustainability performances of firms using environmental, social, and governance scores R. Rajesh Management Division, ABV-Indian Institute of InformationTechnology and Management, Gwalior, 474015, India article info Article history: Received 11 April 2019 Received in revised form 17 October 2019 Accepted 6 December 2019 Available online 9 December 2019 Handling Editor: Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour Keywords: Sustainability performances Developing economies Environmental Social And governance (ESG) scores Grey theory Incidence analysis abstract Sustainability enables the present supply chains to stabilize their gains, particularly for those operating in developing economies. Considering the literature on sustainability and supply chain performances, the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores appear to be an indicator of sustainability perfor- mances. The majority of papers related to sustainability are to assess the sustainability performance using various tools and methods. However, there is limited research that analyses those sustainability assessment results and use the results for improving the future sustainability performance. This research fills this gap by demonstrating the use of grey theory in analysing ESG score for Indian firms. To this end, we study the sustainability performances of 39 firms in the Indian context, listed in the Thomson Reuters ESG scores that are consistently rated for their Environmental, Social, and Governance performances, for a period of 5 years from 2014 to 2018. A grey incidence analysis is used to study the most important indicators or attributes contributing to the sustainability performances of the Indian firms. This is important for the continuous improvement of the firm or its supply chains towards sustainability and to enhance the visibility of supply chains to stakeholders. It is observed from the results of the analysis that the Resource use score, the Environmental innovation score, and the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy score emerges as the most important indicators contributing to Environmental, Social, and Governance performances of Indian firms. Whereas, the Shareholders score, the Management score, and the Human rights score appears to be among the least determining indicators, in the Indian context to achieving total Environmental, Social, and Governance performances. The research throws insights into the areas of poor performances of firms to achieving sustainability in Indian context. As we observe that two out of the three identified areas, the Shareholders score and the Management score appears in the Governance performance side of evaluation in ESG, the implications are uncovered in the direction of improving the Governance performance of Indian firms. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Sustainability is a topic of discussion for managers, practi- tioners, stakeholders, and customers of contemporary firms. Globalization and vertical integrations also have boosted the focus on sustainability. Sustainability has its very origin from the ecological and environmental systems, and is considered as the ability to continue or adapt to changing environments (Seuring and Müller, 2008). It is observed from the literature that sustainability can enhance the competitive advantages of firms. As defined, the main concern of sustainability is about meeting the needs of the present without negotiating the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The development goals for sustainability of firms encompass a triple bottom line approach, integrating the economic, environmental and social issues in operations. The principles of sustainability are adopted by supply chain systems that gave birth to the concepts of sustainable supply chains (Rajeev et al., 2017). The past decade in the literature of sustainable supply chains show a tremendous increase in the number of qualitative and quantitative works addressing varying domains (Brandenburg et al., 2014; Bai and Sarkis, 2017; Sarkis and Zhu, 2018). Sustainability in supply chains has three major dimensions for evaluation, i.e., economic, environmental, and social. These di- mensions are attributed to as indicators of sustainability perfor- mances of firms, or their supply chains (Dubey et al., 2017). Presently, the risks of not being sustainable, accounted as the E-mail addresses: rajeshambzha@gmail.com, rajesh@iiitm.ac.in, rajeshambzha@ yahoo.co.in. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119600 0959-6526/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production 247 (2020) 119600