Premium
Reporting on sustainable development: A comparison of three Italian small and medium‐sized enterprises
Author(s) -
Girella Laura,
Zambon Stefano,
Rossi Paola
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
corporate social responsibility and environmental management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.519
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1535-3966
pISSN - 1535-3958
DOI - 10.1002/csr.1738
Subject(s) - business , sustainable development , work (physics) , sustainability , capital (architecture) , small and medium sized enterprises , industrial organization , finance , political science , mechanical engineering , history , ecology , archaeology , law , biology , engineering
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.