1  Executive Summary

In the last years, the words “sustainability”, “being sustainable” have become very popular and have marked a paradigm shift in the general awareness of how quickly we are going towards a tangible climatic crisis with harsh consequences also on the people inhabiting the Planet. This awareness has brought a shift also in the economic sphere and managers that once only considered economic return as the main factor driving investment choices started to consider also sustainability variables. With such opening towards the search for balance between economic growth, environmental care and social well-being, which is the very essence of the concept of “being sustainable”, the need for a measure started to emerge. In this sense, to give a measure of how much a company is sustainable and therefore worth investing in, various ESG ratings emerged proposing their very own methodology for ESG score assessments.

With many methodologies available but no standardized measure, the ESG investment scenario is still very fragmented and full of vague interpretations. Standing on these premises, the aim of this thesis is to unpack an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rating, through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis to grasp the most influential factors concurring to the company final ESG score, a first step to the understanding of what rating agencies are measuring through the ESG score and what really needs to be measured for a company to be sustainable. The thesis will also be available online at https://anita.codeberg.page .