A Robust Sustainability Assessment for SMEs Based on Multicriteria Decision Aiding

Developing sustainable business standards for small and me-dium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entailing targets such as the minimization of carbon emissions, the promotion of equality and transparency in business processes, is key to achieve transition towards a greener economy. In light of the challenges in implementing and embedding sustainability practices in small firms, we consider the problem of evaluating the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of listed European SMEs, w.r.t. different sustainability indicators, using a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach. Due to lack of agreement over the ‘true’ ESG metrics of firms discussed in the literature, we depart from the practice of constructing a composite indicator based on a sorting of firms, and we assess the stability of the results when the parameters of the preference model are uncertain. Moreover, with the aim of identifying possible sector-specific differences, the sustainability performance is gauged with reference to five economic sectors, based on a unique dataset of SMEs.