Financial and Sustainability Reporting: An Empirical Investigation of Their Relationship in the Italian Context

“Integrated reporting” has gained prominence during the last few years. Investors have required more information also about how sustainability issues and initiatives are expected to contribute to the long-term growth strategy of a business. This communication, which should be provided by top management, leads toward the convergence of sustainability and financial reporting into a single “narrative.” Both financial reporting and non-financial reporting together provide all stakeholders with a comprehensive view of the position and performance of a company. This process has also been encouraged by some European regulations. However, despite these, social and environmental information is still disclosed differently in consolidated annual reports and social–environmental reports. The present work focuses on such differences of content. The analysis regards both (mandatory) consolidated annual reports and (voluntary) stand-alone social–environmental reports prepared by Italian-listed corporate groups for two different accounting periods (both before and after the implementation of Directive 2003/51/EC). The final results show relevant and persistent differences in the disclosure of environmental and employee matters between financial and sustainability reporting

CSR and Greenwashing: A Matter of Perception in the Search of Legitimacy

Pubblicazioni Business Legitimacy, Agricultural Biodiversity, and Environmental Ethics: Insights from Sustainable Bakeries data pubblicazione15 mag 2020 descrizione pubblicazioneHandbook of Business Legitimacy. Responsibility, Ethics and Society (Springer International Publishing) descrizione pubblicazioneThe relationship between biodiversity and ethics is complex and concerns the broader environmental ethics. In the agricultural industry, these issues are fundamental and, in the context of agro-biodiversity, bread production activity plays a primary role. Artisanal bread and its derivatives represent basic food products and a short supply chain, with only one intermediate step between the producer of the raw material (flour) and the consumer, represented by bakery. Furthermore, bakery industry is characterized by different needs, motivations, evaluations, and ethical/moral values, as well as philosophical considerations towards nature, of producers and consumers. Through a multiple case study on four specific companies of the interesting and relevant natural and sustainable bakery industry, our aim is to understand what are the motivations and ethical-moral drives behind specific ideological and operational choices that have an impact on nature and its biodiversity. It is also intended to investigate how the different ethical-philosophical approaches to nature lead to economic and management choices that are also very distant from each other and have different impacts on the protection and promotion of agricultural biodiversity. This study has allowed to place the positions and choices of some entrepreneurs and artisans in the different ethical approaches to nature and therefore to biodiversity. It was also possible to highlight how the different behaviors of consumers and producers arise from the ethical conceptions through which they look at reality and the consequences of their choices on production and sales activities. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_119-1 ISBN: 978-3-319-68845-9 Altro autore Federica Balluchi Vedi la pubblicazione Business Legitimacy, Agricultural Biodiversity, and Environmental Ethics: Insights from Sustainable BakeriesVedi pubblicazione A path through sustainability, ethics and corporate communication. Are we “walking the walk” or just “talking the talk”? data pubblicazione4 mar 2020 descrizione pubblicazioneUniversità degli Studi di Parma descrizione pubblicazioneDoctoral Thesis CSR and Greenwashing: A Matter of Perception in the Search of Legitimacy data pubblicazionegen 2020 descrizione pubblicazioneAccounting, Accountability and Society. Trends and Perspectives in Reporting, Management and Governance for Sustainability (Springer International Publishing) descrizione pubblicazioneIn recent decades, corporate communication has undergone significant changes in terms of channel, content and receivers. To be accountable, companies are called upon to satisfy a plurality of stakeholders who are increasingly interested in non-financial information. In addition, the type and scope of information can significantly influence the competitive advantage of the company and especially, its credibility and reputation. Today, companies are required to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to give response to the call for action from their stakeholders and society. However, some companies engage in CSR initiatives with the aim of only achieving or increasing their level of legitimacy. When companies offer misleading communication and then try to influence the perceptions of their stakeholders, they incur the phenomenon known in literature as “greenwashing”. Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse the phenomenon of greenwashing, tracing its evolution in the extant literature. Greenwashing will then be analysed through the lens of the legitimacy theory and starting from Habermas’s communication theory to define and broaden the relationships between the concepts of disclosure, credibility, legitimacy, perception and greenwashing