Benefit Corporations – Diffusion, Societal Impact, Challenges, and Best Practices

Dear Colleagues,

To go beyond the limits of our development model and address the current sustainability challenges, new forms of business, which dispute the archetypical, merely profit-oriented, traditional model, have been emerging lately (Sabeti 2011). In such a context, growing attention has been devoted to hybrid organizations, i.e., entities that combine elements of profit and non-profit organizations, including goals, value systems and operational logics, and specifically define their strategy taking into account all stakeholders’ interests (Johanson and Vakkuri, 2017; Haigh and Hoffman, 2014; Alexius and Furusten 2020; Haigh et al., 2015). Prominent examples of hybrid organizations are benefit corporations (e.g., Kurland, 2017; Baudot et al., 2020). Although the legal definition may differ, in almost all the states wherein benefit legislation is established, such companies are required to (Hiller and Shackelford, 2018):

• Include in the corporate purpose either a general or specific public benefit, i.e., one or more positive effects, or a reduction in negative effects, for one or more stakeholder categories (e.g., employees, environment, local communities);
• Assess performance annually and report the delivered benefits using a third-party assessment.

Moreover, the corporate directors/managers must consider—as part of their fiduciary duties—broader stakeholder interests as well as profit. Hence, in the case of benefit corporations, the pursuit of public benefit moves from the discretionary, voluntaristic level and becomes a legal obligation (Hiller, 2013; Nigri et al., 2020).

Despite the increasing attention towards benefit corporations, research on the societal impact and challenges of such companies is still incipient and discordant (Kirst et al., 2021). While some studies emphasize the strengths of this new organizational model (Kurland, 2017; Nigri et al., 2020), others highlight aspects that may undermine its effectiveness (e.g., André, 2015; Sorensen and Neville, 2014; Paterno, 2016; Jonsen, 2016; Mcmullen and Warnick, 2016; Collins and Kahn, 2017; Cho, 2017, Mion, 2020) or discuss the challenges such companies must address, in particular when carrying out the processes of stakeholder engagement for strategy development, impact assessment and sustainability reporting (e.g., Hemphill and Cullari, 2014; Nigri and Del Baldo, 2018).

This Special Issue intends to shed light on: (i) the real environmental and social impact of such companies and their potential to change our development model; (ii) the differences in the existing legislation and possible legal, organizational and managerial barriers to the diffusion of the benefit corporation model; (iii) challenges encountered by benefit corporations, and processes and best practices carried out to address them; (iv) standards, approaches and tools that are useful in supporting stakeholder engagement, impact assessment and sustainability reporting by benefit corporations.

We encourage submissions of theoretical as well as practical contributions.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Benefit purpose and core missions of benefit corporations;
• Environmental and social impact of benefit corporations;
• Contribution of benefit corporations to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• Differences and challenges associated with the main legal definitions;
• Organizational and normative barriers for benefit corporations;
• Organizational and managerial challenges in the process of impact assessment and sustainability accounting;
• Approaches to support strategy development to pursue the benefit purpose;
• Frameworks, methodologies and tools to assess the societal impact of benefit corporations;
• Standards and performance indicators for sustainability reporting of benefit corporations;
• Processes and best practices carried out by benefit corporations;
• Financial performance of benefit corporations;
• Benefit corporation ecosystems;
• Benefit corporations and consumers’ choice;
• Business models of benefit corporations and B Corp certified companies: similarities and differences;
• Wellbeing at work in benefit corporations;
• Circular economy initiatives in benefit corporations;
• Digital transformation as a key enabling factor for benefit corporations.

Dr. Barbara Scozzi
Dr. Nicola Bellantuono
Dr. Nadra Pencle
Prof. Dr. Pierpaolo Pontrandolfo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• benefit corporation
• impact assessment
• sustainability accounting
• sustainability reporting