Effect of Corporate Sustainability on the Productivity of Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria, 2011 – 2020

This study examined the effect of corporate sustainability on the productivity of manufacturing firms in Nigeria covering the period of ten (10) years, 2011 to 2020. The specific objectives of the study were; (i) to evaluate the effect of economic sustainability and to ascertain the effect of environmental sustainability on return on capital employed of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. This study adopted the ex post facto research design as the researcher made use of past data in the form of secondary data to evaluate the effect of corporate sustainability on the productivity of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Data for the study were generated from the annual financial statements of the selected manufacturing firms. The method of data analysis employed in the study was the panel data regression analysis and the major diagnostic tests were the unit-root test, cointegration test, and normality test. The major findings of the study were that economic sustainability measured with revenue contributed positively but insignificant to the return on capital employed of manufacturing firms in Nigeria (β = 0.112516, p-value = 0.3811 > 0.05) and environmental sustainability measured with employee health and safety costs contributed positively but insignificant to the return on capital employed of manufacturing firms in Nigeria (β = 0.027756, p-value = 0.6671 > 0.05). The implications of these findings were that corporate sustainability contributed positively to the productivity of the selected manufacturing firms but the contribution is not consistent and significant. The study, therefore, concluded that the companies have the prospects and potentials to achieve significant positive contributions in the long run. The study, therefore, recommended that the management of these firms should be more strategic by engaging in sustainability practices since the sustainability parameters were seen to have a positive but non-significant effect on the productivity of manufacturing firms on average.