Doing more than they say: Hidden ESG as a practice–visibility mismatch in Ukrainian agriculture

The purpose of this paper is to examine hidden ESG as a practice–visibility configuration in which enterprises implement substantive sustainability activities but remain weakly visible in formal, publicly legible ESG disclosure. Focusing on Ukrainian agriculture under conditions of institutional fragility and conflict, the authors explain why sustainability practice often fails to translate into standardized reporting and why this matters for ESG governance and EU-aligned market access. Drawing on 53 structured qualitative interviews with agricultural enterprises across 15 Ukrainian regions, the authors use an interpretive qualitative design with descriptive quantification. Standardized items map implemented sustainability practices and internal assessment and disclosure/communication channels, while open-ended prompts elicit explanations of under-disclosure. Data were analyzed through inductive thematic coding alongside descriptive statistics to identify action–visibility configurations and interpret their drivers. Many enterprises report meaningful environmental and social practices – for example, soil and input stewardship, efficiency measures and community support – yet restrict related information to fragmented compliance submissions or local audiences rather than formal ESG channels. Under-disclosure is sustained by a translation failure shaped by fragmented reporting infrastructures, limited administrative capacity, low institutional trust and perceived disclosure risk, weak/uncertain benefits of formal reporting and wartime prioritization of operational continuity and solidarity. The sample is diverse but not statistically representative. Conceptually, this study shifts attention from disclosure volume to legibility, showing how institutional fragmentation can produce low ESG visibility even when practice is substantive and clarifying the boundary with greenhushing by emphasizing constrained reporting capacity and infrastructure rather than primarily strategic silence. For regulators and standard-setters, the findings of this study support modular, low-burden reporting pathways that convert data already produced for tax, environmental and statistical compliance into a small set of sector-relevant ESG indicators, reducing duplication and enabling comparability. For banks, buyers and donors, lightweight evidence templates (focused on a limited number of practice-based indicators) can improve screening and monitoring for sustainability-linked finance and procurement, allowing high-practice enterprises to be recognized without requiring full-scale Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive-style reporting. Improving ESG legibility can reduce the exclusion of smaller and non-listed agricultural enterprises from sustainability-linked finance, reconstruction programs and policy dialogue and can better align stakeholder decisions with real sustainability performance rather than reporting capacity. This is relevant to rural communities, employees, lenders and policymakers who rely on credible information to allocate resources and design support. This paper reframes under-disclosure as a practice–visibility mismatch rooted in institutional conditions, showing how ESG governance can unintentionally reward reporting capacity over sustainability performance. This study provides a context-sensitive explanation of hidden ESG in a transition and conflict-affected economy and offers actionable implications for making substantive practices externally legible.