Sustainability performance: A comparative analysis in the polish banking sector

Abstract

This article analyses the Polish banking sector's involvement with sustainable development through a multidimensional evaluation applying the technique for order preference by similarity ideal solution (TOPSIS) method with different weight vectors. Our results highlight numerous shortcomings in the sustainability performance of commercial banking activities. In fact, there was backsliding during the analysed period (2015-2017), which suggests that supporting sustainability performance was not one of the priorities of the Polish banking sector. However, we found a dichotomy between national and foreign banks. The government-owned banks and national banks showed greater commitment to this issue than did the banks with foreign capital. This finding suggests that banks with foreign capital were not fully interested in sponsoring activities aimed at sustainable development.