Search Results (6)

This study intends to provide insights and challenges for the shape of the B movement, an emerging paradigm that fosters cross-sectoral partnerships and encourages ethical business practices through so-called purpose-driven businesses. Focusing on Italy, the first European country to adopt this managerial model, the research investigates Italian Benefit Corporations, known as Società Benefit (SB), and their most appealing sustainability claims from a consumer perspective. The analysis intends to inform theory development by assuming the cultural and creative industry (CCI) as a field of interest, utilizing a within-subjects experimental design to analyze data from a diverse consumer sample across various contexts. The results indicate that messaging centered on economic sustainability emerged as the most effective in generating positive consumer responses, highlighting a prevailing inclination toward pragmatic factors such as affordability, economic accessibility, and tangible benefits rather than social issues. While sustainable behaviors are not yet widespread, latent ethical sensitivity for authentic, value-driven businesses suggests that economic and ethical dimensions can be strategically synthesized to enhance consumer engagement. This insight highlights the role of BCs in catalyzing a shift in consumption patterns within ethical-based and creative-driven sectors. Full article

Corporate sustainability performance becomes the central element in many current business developments: the total value of ESG investment grows, more and more clients want to invest in projects that deliver more than the pure financial return, companies are innovating and transforming their business models, and adopting the B-Corp values. Environmental and wider societal impact becomes the central focus of the businesses that want to become the force for good. This article adopts an empirical approach and builds an ESG index of corporate performance based on eight critical metrics representing the economic, social, and environmental dimensions under varying policy priorities. Furthermore, it investigates correlations between these aggregate ESG indices and share prices as well as return on investment, or ROE, of companies. The article goes on to investigate empirically the correlation between employees/turnover, diversity, CO₂ emissions, waste generation, and water use of companies and share prices and ROE metrics, respectively. The reasons for divergence between correlations of sustainability performance indicators with share prices, ROE, and profits/turnover are discussed in detail, with particular attention drawn to the reasons why diversity might matter more for the share prices than ROE and why waste generation, water use, and CO₂ emissions might still be poorly reflected in the ROE while some of these metrics have a significant connection with the profit/turnover ratio. The article will undoubtedly be of interest to ESG fund managers, investors, corporate sustainability officers, and policymakers. Full article

Crowdfunding is an emerging practice that plays a central role in funding innovative ideas that support social sustainability. B-Corps are sustainable companies that are increasingly pursuing innovative financial strategies to fund their corporate sustainability goals. To date, the use of crowdfunding as a social financing innovation by B-Corp organisations has received scant attention. This paper contributes to closing this gap by addressing three research questions. The first investigates the relationship between B-Corps certification and the use of crowdfunding. The second explores whether there is a relationship between crowdfunding and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The third investigates B-Corps’ level of information transparency in relation to this innovation and SDGs. Our investigation involved a cross-analysis of B Labs and the main crowdfunding platforms. In total, 28 B-Corps were identified as using crowdfunding platforms. Of these, 22 were selected for analysis. Our findings reveal that the pandemic period increased the use of crowdfunding among B-Corps. Crowdfunding financing was not found to be linked to the SDGs as not all investors purse these goals. We further found that investors prefer to base their decisions on the information communicated via crowdfunding platforms. Few companies declared the use of this innovative form of financing on their websites, especially on the homepage, and less than half of the companies analyzed included this form of financing in their sustainability reports. Our findings suggest that managers should provide specific information on the objectives of the campaign to be funded on the crowdfunding platforms and in the “other sustainability documents”. This way the campaigns would be more effective and could raise a greater amount of money. Full article

The construction industry and the built environment accounts for 38% of global greenhouse gases. Significant efforts are being implemented across stakeholder categories to provide supportive guidelines and ways to address the negative impact; however, market developers need to be engaged to create the scale of impact due to large portfolios. Unfortunately, the short-term interests of private developers in real estate are to maximize profits and not to invest in long-term climate mitigation strategies. This paper will address the barriers and opportunities to incentivize, regulate real estate developers, and account for the market to adopt the lens of the B-Corp movement’s triple bottom line business practices, using business to address social and environmental challenges. Academically, accepted theories addressed through a literature review will be analyzed by a socially-oriented developer in Montreal and demonstrated through an eco-district case study. This study will identify the key stakeholders and address the life cycle thinking process to tackle the carbon impacts in the building development sector through the lens of real estate developers. This literature review will be complemented by the empirical study of one of the authors being a private developer, to link academic best practices with the market realities of real estate development. The findings of the process will outline possible solutions to real estate development that suggest cities have the opportunity to play the role of an educator, mediator, regulator, and incentivizing body to private real estate developers. Generally, critical factors of collaboration and capacity building through business modelling lists of barriers and opportunities could promote positive adoption opportunities for large-scale green development projects with a high impact on climate mitigation strategies, which could transform how the construction industry adapts to building green and socially inclusive communities. Full article

The objective of this study is to explore empirically the dimensions that generate high impact in the finance industry to better understand its contribution from a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) perspective. We analyze data concerning impacts of finance sector firms certified by B Corp in order to identify the combinations that are necessary and/or sufficient to obtain a recognition of their high impact generation. The methodology followed to identify the impact dimensions is fsQCA, (fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis), a qualitative comparative analysis method applied to a sample of finance firms (n-181). The results indicate that financial sector firms exhibited four combinations focusing on different impact dimensions. Specifically, the first route indicates that a high degree of focus on customers and communities is sufficient to obtain a high impact score. The second path signals that the combination of the impacts on customers and corporate governance could lead to the same result, while in the third pathway the focus would be on the employees. Finally, the fourth route indicates that some financial firms focus strongly on their communities, corporate governance and their employees, but very weakly on the environmental dimension. Consequently, diverse combinations of CSR dimensions characterize financial sector contributions to impact generation and sustainable development. Full article

A circular economy has been gaining momentum as the most innovative approach in business. Its proposed model, based on sustainability and new product-driven differentiated strategies of production and organizational exchange, has brought to light the need to better understand the relevance of stakeholders as a critical factor in the creation of new added value in business management. The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate how the B-Corp Certification System could contribute to a process of awareness raising in business organizations. It also focuses on the stakeholders’ commitment, within the framework of circular economy principles, and demonstrates that those companies who are adopting the certification concerning “recycling service and waste management” strongly contribute to the development in the direction of the circular economy. The analysis of the case studies shows two possible scenarios describing the circular approach in business and the different roles of stakeholders in the activation of such a virtuous path. “Social recycling” considers the key role of social participation and contribution in circular-economy related activities of primary and secondary stakeholders, and “highly regenerative recycling” aims to involve qualified stakeholders to start inter-organizational symbioses within the circular process of waste recycling. Key factors, such as industrial symbiosis, tax benefits, financial incentives, legislative harmonization, and the consumers’ behavior, represent the tenets of the circular economy model An awareness-raising perspective and the capacity on the part of companies to understand the relevance of stakeholders and the way to transform their role into the most effective lever to reinforce competitiveness is therefore necessary. Accordingly, the whole system of Benefit Corporation certification could boost business towards new business models involving stakeholders in several directions. Full article