The problem of working out a methodology for sustainable development of territories and economic entities, which would improve the quality of life by changing the attitude to the management of natural, economic and human capital, is on the agenda. The study of the evolution of sustainable development methodology has shown that various methodological tools for assessing this process at the level of companies, regions and cities are gradually being formed. The greatest work by scientists and practitioners to date has been done in the field of ESG-rating of business companies. However, this cannot be said about the studies on assessing the sustainability of development of the second major segment of the national economy – social sphere institutions. The aim of the research is the development of a scientific approach to solving this problem from the position of the ESG-concept. The data of ESG-rating of regions and cities conducted by various Russian expert agencies, in which the objects of the study are, among other things, individual segments of social infrastructure, were taken as a basis. However, the analysis of rating results revealed the impossibility of their comparison, which is due to the use by different agencies of their own algorithms, including different evaluation technologies, criterion blocks and indicators. Therefore, we have critically analyzed the ESG-rating of regions to identify the S-component and proposed our own methodology for assessing the sustainable development of social infrastructure of regions within the framework of aggregate and intra-industry ranking. It is based on the general evaluation indicators of rating agencies, supplemented by other indicators that are significant from our point of view. The practical testing of the methodology helped to assess the sustainability of social infrastructure development of four classical industries in 18 subjects of the Central Federal District and to rank them according to the aggregate assessment. The research results are of interest to federal and regional specialized agencies in terms of forming the main provisions of budgetary social policy and determining priorities for sustainable development of social infrastructure in the regions
Keywords
sustainable development, responsible business, social infrastructure, ESG, ECG concepts, rating