Name: R. Narmadha
Country: India

Year: 2026
Volume: Vol-16, Issue-2, Year-2026 (July-December)
Page Number: 183-191
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22958683

ABSTRACT
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations have moved from the periphery of corporate reporting into the core of strategic management discourse. Yet a persistent gap remains between ESG as a compliance and disclosure exercise and ESG as a source of embedded, durable strategic advantage. This paper adopts a conceptual, literature-based approach to examine how ESG principles are integrated into corporate strategy and to interpret the mechanisms through which this integration is associated with firm resilience, competitiveness, and long-term value. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the resource-based view, legitimacy theory, and recent empirical literature, the paper develops a three-tier interpretive framework — compliance-based, risk-mitigation, and value-creation ESG — that classifies firms according to their strategic maturity. Thematic analysis of secondary evidence indicates that the financial and competitive returns to ESG integration are context-dependent, m