Sustainable practices in business operations - Merely a moral obligation of modern companies or a strategic asset for enhancing shareholders value.

Sustainable practices are critical to the operation of businesses. The realization that operating in an ecologically and socially responsible manner is the only way for a company to be commercially successful is spreading among more and more businesses. Using econometric tools, this paper examines the complex interactions between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure scores and firm performance metrices, such as ROA, ROE, and Tobin's Q. The research employs GMM and panel quantile regression to address the heterogeneous impact of ESG disclosure at different levels of performance. The results indicate that ESG and its components in the environmental and governance scores have varying effects, often with a negative impact for less successful firms but mixed outcomes for more successful firms. The innovative integration of panel quantile regression in this study elucidates how asymmetric effects of ESG disclosure influence firm performance-nuances not captured by standard methods. These findings have significant implications for corporate decision-making, regulatory policies, and stakeholder engagement in the context of sustainability practices.