Reporting on sustainable development: A comparison of three Italian small and medium‐sized enterprises

Abstract

Nowadays, we are facing a new phase of capitalism. Information that is beyond financial capital and able to provide a more comprehensive picture of the path towards sustainable development of organizations is increasingly needed. A remarkable body of evidence already exists on how large listed companies are facing this change, but very little is known about small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This work aims to analyse if and to what extent new forms of reporting such as sustainability and integrated reporting are adopted by SMEs to illustrate their journey to sustainable development. To this end, the reports of three Italian SMEs have been examined against the internationally set principles and contents of these reporting models. It emerges that, despite the shared ambition of these reports, they are different in nature and deliver a quite distinctive representation of the concerned SMEs and their ways to pursuing and communicating sustainable development at a micro level.

An analysis of environmental sustainability in small & medium‐sized enterprises: Patterns and trends

“…We also classified the studies we investigated by continent (Figure ). Most of the research studies we have found occur in Europe, which makes up 41% of the research (e.g., Girgenti, Peano, Baudino, & Tecco, ; Hertel & Menrad, ; Flynn & Davis, ; Jansson, Nilsson, Modig, & Hed Vall, ; Mayr, Mitter, & Aichmayr, ; Torkkeli, Kuivalainen, Saarenketo, & Puumalainen, ; Girella, Zambon, & Rossi, ), Asia accounts for 22% (e.g., Seth, Rehman, & Shrivastava, ; Singh, Olugu, & Musa, ) and South America at 19% (e.g., Lucato, Costa, & de Oliveira Neto, ; Pacheco, Caten, Jung, Navas, & Cruz‐Machado, ; Sarango‐Lalangui, Álvarez‐García, & del Río‐Rama, ).…”

“…We also classified the studies we investigated by continent ( Figure 4). Most of the research studies we have found occur in Europe, which makes up 41% of the research (e.g., Girgenti, Peano, Baudino, & Tecco, 2014;Hertel & Menrad, 2015;Flynn & Davis, 2016;Jansson, Nilsson, Modig, & Hed Vall, 2017;Mayr, Mitter, & Aichmayr, 2017;Torkkeli, Kuivalainen, Saarenketo, & Puumalainen, 2019;Girella, Zambon, & Rossi, 2019), Asia accounts for 22% (e.g., Seth, Rehman, & Shrivastava, 2018;Singh, Olugu, & Musa, 2016) and South America at 19% (e.g., Lucato, Costa, & ables on which SMEs can be categorized (Bar, 2015;Boiral, Ebrahimi, Kuyken, & Talbot, 2019;Groot et al, 2019;Long, Looijen, & Blok, 2018;Malesios et al, 2018;Prieto-Sandoval, Ormazabal, Jaca, & Viles, 2018). Our results show the pattern in the sectors that are studied from 2013 to 2019 (Figure 7).…”

What companies do not disclose about their environmental policy and what institutional pressures may do to respect

“…The CSR strategy allows companies, in collaboration with their stakeholders (Martínez‐Ferrero, Suárez‐Fernández, & García‐Sánchez, ; Tolmie, Lehnert, & Zhao, ), to reconcile economic, social, and environmental aspects (Comisión Europea, ) thus allowing sustainable business behaviour (Cinquini, Passetti, Tenucci, & Frey, ; Engle, ; Girella, Zambon, & Rossi, ). Additionally, the adoption of informative practices enhances the reputation and image of companies (Bear, Rahman, & Post, ; Heikkurinen & Ketola, ; Hur, Kim, & Woo, ; Lii & Lee, ; Minor, ), allows access to new financial markets (Cheng, Ioannou, & Serafeim, ; García‐Sánchez, Hussain, Martínez‐Ferrero, & Ruiz‐Barbadillo, ; Jiraporn, Jiraporn, Boeprasert, & Chang, ), and creates a scenario of value and leadership for society (Cuadrado‐Ballesteros, García‐Sánchez, & Martínez Ferrero, ; Dhaliwal, Li, Tsang, & Yang, ; I. M. García‐Sánchez & Noguera‐Gámez, , ; Martínez‐Ferrero, Ruiz‐Cano, & García‐Sánchez, ; Stanaland, Lwin, & Murphy, ; Tata & Prasad, ).…”

What colour is the corporate social responsibility report? Structural visual rhetoric, impression management strategies, and stakeholder engagement

“…The disclosure of non‐financial information (NFI) about business performance has become part of corporate communication policy within large companies. Conceptually, these reports should respond to the informative demands of the stakeholders, reporting in the most transparent way possible and reflecting relevant information on the social and environmental performance and impacts of the firms (Boiral, ; Girella, Zambon, & Rossi, ; Minutolo, Kristjanpoller, & Stakeley, ), which in turn could lead to greater responsibility for corporate actions (Cho et al, 2014; García‐Sánchez & Martínez‐Ferrero, ).…”