RUSSIAN COMPANIES’ ESG INVESTMENTS IN QUALITY OF UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF COVID-19

Abstract

The evolution of the ESG concept of quality management has been developing for more than 60 years. In various historic periods it focused on different aspect of quality from traditional CSR issues to 17 modern SDGs. Depending on the international economic situation in some periods social problems were more important for quality, in others, more often, ecology was more on the agenda. Analyzing the historic path the authors prove that in a normal course of life international community of transnational companies and politicians tends to pay more attention to the ecological aspects of quality. The hypothesis of the paper is that Covid-19 must have changed the ESG investment priorities during quality management. Based on the non-financial reports of the leading Russian companies the authors come to the conclusion that even before pandemic the Russian big companies were more focused on the social sphere during quality management, and now as a result of the new conditions this trends is significantly more vivid. On the other hand, companies from different industries show various ESG strategies during quality management that surprisingly are not correlated with financial losses from the pandemic