Volume 10, Issue 4 - Benefit Corporations and Corporate Social Intrapreneurship; Guest Editors: Salvatore Esposito De Falco and Antonio Renzi

The present Special Issue focuses benefit corporation and social intrapreneurship as two topics which in the last decades have taken on a growing role in studies about both management and economics. This growing interest comes from globalization and digitization phenomena that have determined a change in firms’ stakeholders expectations. In this regard, social pressures about the behavior of companies have determined a new way of conceiving profit seen not only as shareholder remuneration but also as a direct or indirect tool to foster greater interdependence between economic activities and social objectives. For instance, the relationship between profit and sustainability no longer follows dichotomous logic. The firms are moving towards a path of socialization essential for their survival. The issue of sustainability, which previously appeared secondary in business economics studies, today is a pure necessity; the current competitive dimensions are based on intense and continuous engagement actions towards all stakeholders. This perspective is reflected in new theoretical strands such as the Social Emotional Wealth Theory, in which profit in the short run assumes secondary positions with respect to the survival not only of the company, but also of its founder, who tends to link its “immortality” to his/her firm. Thus, issues related to the sustainability are entering more and more the DNA of the firms on the one hand and economic policies are increasingly interested in the global aspects of sustainability (social, economic, environmental and governance) on the other hand. These trends have favored the development of new types of businesses, such as benefit corporation and start-ups related to the social entrepreneurship logic, committed to combining long-term profitability with certain standards and optimizing their positive impact on employees, the community in which they operate and the environment as well. The current economic crisis caused by Covid-19 seems to have accelerated this tendency to combine economic and social benefits.

Over the last decades, Benefit Corporations arouse as a new corporate structure, alternative to traditional ones and pointing to offer a new approach to the management of business and sustainability issues. These companies' activities are statutory aimed at bridging for-profit and no-profit activities; thus, they intentionally and statutory pursue economic purposes together with social and environmental ones, to create a positive impact on economy, society and environment. Even though, Italian and other national laws set some specific disclosure duties for Benefit Corporations, especially in terms of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues, the literature still calls for further research on the topic. Therefore, this paper is aimed at contributing to bridge this gap, investigating the way Italian Benefit Corporations approach ESG disclosure. To this end, an exploratory analysis has been conducted, implementing a qualitative method, based on a multiple case study strategy. Even though the descriptive nature of the study, the achieved findings pointed out that the Benefit Corporation structure not necessarily implies a better approach to ESG.

Sustainable development is now seen as the business paradigm for the 21st century and poses a significant dilemma for managers, which is to balance economic goals, environmental impact and social development. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to sustainable entrepreneurship as a concept combining triple bottom line (TBL) aspects since introducing social and ecological values and goals, in addition to economic ones, is seen as a long-term strategy for survival and value creation. Italy’s socio-economic context where there are a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and social enterprises has proven to be a good field for new hybrid forms of for-purpose business. This paper is a single case in-depth study conducted over three years (2017–2019) analyzing Mondora, a certified and legally recognized Benefit Corporation that has introduced full-spectrum teal practices in its governance structure and is shifting the paradigm as a flourishing enterprise. The aim of this paper is to analyze the legal and governance framework of Mondora as a benefit corporation and delineate a best-case example that embraces new leadership practices as a pilot for future research on benefit corporations. The implications lie in the fact that the typology of the social entrepreneur present in benefit corporations has the characteristics of the quantum leader outlined by Tsao and Laszlo (2019).

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has gained prominence in recent years, becoming a primary field of study and providing rich research opportunities that are both challenging and intriguing. This paper seeks to fill the knowledge gap in this field by improving the understanding of business models of SE and, more specifically, investigating how social entrepreneurs design their business models in order to create both social and economic value. Using the abductive approach method, the paper explores a single case study that enquires about the business model of the social enterprise named “La Paranza Cooperative”, located in southern Italy and operating in the cultural heritage industry. Our main theoretical contribution lies in illustrating and formalising the ambidexterity perspective through which social enterprises simultaneously pursue goals that are apparently contradictory, such as economic and social ones. Furthermore, on the practical side, we assess the win–win managerial mechanisms that benefit social enterprises through their external environment as a bundle of distinctive resources while contributing to its requalification. Finally, our explorative study opens-up for deeper and more detailed future research on the business model of SE.

This article aims at delivering new theoretical interpretation and quantitative evidence concerning the emergence and development of social enterprises (SEs) in Italy. Where the former is concerned the article seeks to provide the core features necessary to identify when an organization can be defined as a SE. In particular, the analysis retraces the steps back to the intersection between “classical” studies on entrepreneurial non-profit organizations and the more recent literature on entrepreneurial action and social responsibility for the business enterprise. The institutional and quantitative analysis then focuses on the development of SEs in Italy, discussing the institutional evolution of the new legal forms, and the principal area of activity of SEs in Italy. This country represents a key player in the evolution of SEs as it pioneered legislation and practice in Europe and the emerging new frontier for modeling different types of SEs.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are the most relevant and recent attempt to integrate sustainable development ambitions and environmental concerns in a policy framework. Recently, few studies have been conducted to investigate the gap between sustainability reporting and the SDGs, initiating a new stream of research (Lozano 2015; Rosati and Faria 2019). However, the role of accounting systems as a support for moving toward goals and targets outlined by the SDGs has been poorly deepened in not-traditional profit-oriented businesses. Among these, there are cooperatives: jointly owned benefit corporations. The peculiarity of cooperatives lays in the collective governance and the fact that profits are re-invested in the cooperative or in local projects and activities rather than being distributed to the shareholders. The present study intends to fill this gap by answering the following research question: can a cooperative, given its peculiar nature, contribute to sustainability? To do so, the annual sustainability reports of the largest Italian cooperative have been analyzed under the lens of SDGs. The results show that cooperatives can actively contribute to sustainability, especially on the local level. In fact, they have proved to be important players in transposing the SDGs from the national level to the local level, constituting an important link between the international community and the local one.

In this article, we examine recent trends in CSR within a broader consideration of its historical development. The origin of CSR and the purpose it serves nowadays have diverged in different directions. By pinpointing some of the reasons for this shift and charting the evolution of the historical development of CSR, compounded with the stakeholder approach of the firm, we aim to shed some light on the B Corp label. Will this label, which has the potential for new directions in the field of social entrepreneurship, suffer the same fate as CSR and Stakeholders? Or, is it just old wine in a new bottle?