Sustainability Reporting as a Driver of Organizational Innovation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment with Italian Benefit Corporations

In recent years, sustainability reporting has taken on an increasingly important role in corporate strategy discussions. Initially a voluntary tool, it has become a benchmark for measuring and communicating the environmental, social, and economic impacts of organizations in a structured way. In light of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the research assumes that reporting is a lever for change and organizational innovation. To test the hypothesis, the authors chose to use what is known as a ‘natural experiment’: they observed the experience of a particular type of company, benefit corporations, which are required to publish an annual impact report. The empirical investigation was conducted using content analysis methodology to read the impact reports, websites, and social media channels of the companies, as well as case studies through semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study suggest that sustainability reporting can play a role that goes beyond transparency and compliance. In the cases analyzed, the preparation of the sustainability or impact report appears to function as an organizational coordination mechanism that mobilizes internal and external stakeholders. Through this process, companies progressively develop shared interpretations of sustainability objectives, experiment with measurement practices and introduce organizational changes affecting work organization, production processes and value-chain relationships.