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Abstract
Obiettivi. Questa ricerca esplora in che misura e come il reporting di sostenibilità venga adottato dalle piccole e medie imprese (PMI) quotate sul mercato Euronext Growth Milan, trattandosi di una selezione di imprese particolarmente dinamiche e competitive e, sulla base delle legitimacy theory (Patten, 1992; Suchman, 1995; O’Donovan, 2002), anche incentivate ad aumentare la trasparenza e a migliorare la comunicazione finanziaria e non (Dumay et al., 2019; Sciulli e Adhariani, 2021).
Metodologia. Questo progetto di ricerca ha comportato l'analisi di report annuali ufficiali e di altre fonti d’informazioni di carattere non-finanziario divulgate dalle imprese del mercato Euronext Growth Milan. L'obiettivo è stato quello d’intercettare tutte le forme di rendicontazione relative alla sostenibilità adottate, in attesa dell'implementazione della CSRD dal 2026. Lo studio ha incluso anche una content analysis dei report di sostenibilità di un sottocampione di 20 PMI.
Risultati. Questo studio descrive lo stato dell'arte della rendicontazione non finanziaria in un segmento particolarmente interessante di PMI, dimostrando che sono ancora lontane dal conformarsi pienamente alle aspettative, alla teoria, alle recenti normative e forniti dagli organismi internazionali. Questa ricerca evidenzia limiti e lacune della prassi, riguardanti sia la quantità sia la qualità della rendicontazione di sostenibilità.
Implicazioni. Questa analisi ha un doppio valore. Da una prospettiva teorica, contribuisce alla comprensione della propensione delle PMI a investire volontariamente in una rendicontazione arricchita e integrata per soddisfare le esigenze degli stakeholder e ottenere la loro legittimazione. Da un punto di vista pratico, invece, un secondo risultato consiste nell'identificare le lacune che ancora esistono nella prassi, anche alla luce delle sfide poste dai requisiti normativi emergenti.
Originalità dello studio. La letteratura sulla reportistica di sostenibilità da parte delle PMI è ancora piuttosto limitata (Khoja et al., 2022). Pertanto, questo studio mira a far luce sulle loro attuali pratiche e sulle principali sfide che si trovano a dover affrontare.
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