@article{Lusk_Wells_2021, title={Vetting of Bloomberg’s ESG Governance ISS:QualityScore [GQS] }, volume={9}, url={https://journals.scholarpublishing.org/index.php/ABR/article/view/9952}, DOI={10.14738/abr.94.9952}, abstractNote={<p><strong><em>Context</em></strong> Of the plethora of market navigation platforms, the <em>Environment, Social, and Governance </em>[<em>ESG</em><em><sup>Ó</sup></em>]-platform offered by Bloomberg<sup>Ô</sup> Professional Services<sup>* </sup>is one of the most richly endowed, including nearly 2,000 data-fields that provide an invaluable context for better understanding the “Stakeholder-impact” of the firm’s activities. A recent amelioration of the ESG-platform is the link with Institutional Shareholder Services [ISS] that offers a taxonomy where firms are assigned to Governance-risk decile-groups based upon ISS:<strong>G</strong>overnance<strong>Q</strong>uality<strong>S</strong>cores: (GQS<sup>Ô</sup>). The GQS-platform offers a data-driven approach to scoring & screening designed to help investors monitor company governance activities so as to better inform their decision-making. <strong><em>Study Design</em></strong> Clear is: Market Intel-Platforms only have <u>one</u> simple <em>raison d’être</em>: <strong><em>To provide a relative advantage in teasing out market winners relative to the “Squawk-On-The Street”</em></strong>. If this is the case, information professionals, in a best practices context, are tacitly obligated to offer vetting tests of platforms such as the GQS to service investors in need an independent and reliable evaluation to Ferret-out useful market guidance platforms. In this endeavor, we offer a vetting evaluation of a random sample of firms included in the two polar-ISS:GQS:Classifications: GQS[1] & GQS[10]]. <strong><em>Point of information</em></strong> The intent of the GQS-Vetting is not to “reverse-engineer” the results of the GQS-assignment protocol so as to arrive an “inferentially” de-coded approximation of the actual ISS:GQS-protocol. Our vetting addresses the question: <em>Is there a logical reason to reject the belief that the set of GQS-assignment protocols are not well formed thus creating Governance-risk-groupings that have no intra-group coherence and so exhibit no inter-group differentiability.</em> <strong><em>Results</em></strong> Initially, we used a <em>Strawman-Vetting</em> test followed by FPE-inferential tests using specific and sensitive Income Statement and Balance Sheet Panel-profiles from a random sample of the firms in: GQS[1] & GQS[10]. We find that the triage-focus of GQS[1] is “Revenue at the Margin” while that of GQS[10] is “Asset[Net] Management”. Also, both groups have exhibited impressive attention to managing Working Capital. <strong><em>Summary</em></strong>: The ISS:GQS-assignment protocols seem to be well-formed and capable of offering useful differentiation.</p>}, number={4}, journal={Archives of Business Research}, author={Lusk, Edward J. and Wells, Mia}, year={2021}, month={Apr.}, pages={15–42} }