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Research shows that the majority of investors, consumers and even younger consumers who are interested in social responsibility are unaware of B Corps. Companies spend significant time and money to obtain B Corp status that B Lab, the non-profit that certifies companies, wants to use as a force for good. Using signaling theory and corporate communication theory, the study examines whether B Corps market their B Corp status effectively on B Corps' social media sites to determine whether brand equity is being built there for the B Corp label by the B Corp companies themselves.

The authors content analyzed social media activity of 100 randomly selected US B Corps ranging in size and industry type over a two-month period on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The sample was selected from the listing of the B Corporations on the B Lab website using a skip interval method. The authors searched for preselected keywords within two main categories, one directly mentioning B Corps (such as B Corp logo and B Corp name), and another discussing company social responsibility activities that directly relate to what B Corps do but did not mention the B Corp name.

The study finds that half of the B Corps had no social media presence. Of those who were active on social media, most B Corps did not mention B Corp status while many of the B Corps discussed social responsibility activities that directly talked about workers, environment, community, and governance, the areas that B Corp certification covers.

The study indicates that reverse decoupling might better explain communication of B Corp certification on social media than signaling theory. The finding is consistent with more recent research on certifications that shows that obtaining certifications by companies does not have to be followed by marketing certificates even when that could be beneficial. On the other hand, communication of general pro-social claims is consistent with the assumptions of the signaling theory and often used by B Corps. The study suggests why companies market general claims but not a B Corp label. Findings also suggest that when promoting the B Corp label is not done, a firm's internal values are not being expressed externally but when social responsible activities are promoted, a firm's internal values are being expressed externally. The research points to a missed opportunity for B Corps that spend significant resources to get certified. Future studies should employ larger samples with and international companies and venture into other forms of marketing through which B Corp status may be conveyed.

B Corps can easily connect information on the socially responsible activities of B Corps with B Corp status on social media and reap the benefits of B Corps by creating equity for B Corp label on multiple levels. This would also help B-Lab that strives to develop a stronger brand for the B Corps' certification. When consumers know what B Corp stands for, consumers are willing to pay premium prices. Investors are also increasingly interested in companies that care for stakeholders and the environment and are governed in transparent and socially responsible ways.

B Corps are described by the B-Lab as a “force for good” that benefits communities, environment and society. Understanding how certifications such as B Corps are communicated to the public and improving how they are communicated can help businesses reap more benefits from B Corps' socially responsible activity and help consumers and investors become educated about such companies so that B Corps can support them. This is important as B-Corps certification is still not well known. Marketing B Corp certification more effectively can help develop a wider and stronger network of businesses that want to do good, investors that want to found socially responsible companies and consumers who want to buy from B Corps. To create such a marketplace B Corps need to be better marketed online.

The study shows that the authors cannot assume that the certifications that companies obtain, often using significant resources and potentially offering many benefits for building brand equity, will be communicated to the stakeholders to reap these benefits. The study provides possible reasons for why companies may not market such endeavors. The study questions assumptions implicit in signaling theory and by using reverse decoupling the study explains why companies may pursue certifications but not market that the companies obtain them even when pro-social certifications have a great potential to differentiate a company among stakeholders that look for socially responsible firms. The study questions what this means for creating a change in business to become a “force for good.”

The purpose of this study is to investigate the sustainability performances of apparel, footwear and accessory (AFA) B Corps, providing companies, especially micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, with reasonable suggestions on how to incorporate the concept of sustainability efficiently.

This study focused on 117 AFA B Corps. B Corps’ overall sustainability performances consist of their performances in the five areas of governance, workers, community, environment and customers. First, the 117 B Corps’ performances in these areas were compared. Second, multiple regression models were built to predict the B Corps’ sustainability performances based on their inherent characteristics (headquarter location, age, size and industry sector). Third, according to the B Corps’ performances in the five areas, the B Corps were clustered using the hieratical clustering method.

This study found that the B Corps’ performances in different areas were significantly different and their performances in the area of the community were better than in the other four areas. The B Corps’ characteristics were correlated to their sustainability performances. For example, company size was positively related to the B Corps’ performances in the area of workers. Additionally, Clusters 1, 2 and 3 were identified and characterized by their competitive performances in the areas of governance, workers and community, respectively.

This study contributes to the knowledge of AFA B Corps’ sustainability performances, identifying the weakness and strongness of the sustainable practices accepted by existing AFA B Corps and lending insights regarding how to predict and improve sustainability performances.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether B corps’ (for-profit entities whose owners voluntarily commit to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, beyond traditional CSR, that generates profits, but not at the expense of stakeholders) commitment to social issues influences two aspects of financial performance: employee productivity and sales growth.

This paper is an exploratory analysis of B corps. This paper examines B corps with B Lab’s B Impact Assessment reports and PrivCo financial data, for descriptive information. This paper also analyzes the financial impact of obtaining and reporting on excellence in both employee and consumer focus, as well as the differences in financial growth between B corps and non-hybrid peers.

Overall, results suggest that, among B corps whose treatment of employees (consumers) is recognized as an “area of excellence,” employee productivity (sales growth) is significantly higher. Additionally, sales growth is significantly higher for B corps relative to their peer, non-hybrid, matched firms.

Results from this study inform states considering the adoption of the B corp legal status – this legal status does not hinder firm profitability, but instead enhances long-term firm value while allowing firms to beneficially affect their communities, consumers, employees and the environment.

Results from this study provide important insights regarding the current paradigm shift from the traditional business focus on profit maximization to a fruitful coexistence of profits with social interests and initiatives, within a structure of dissolving national boundaries and increasingly divergent logics.

This paper provides an initial empirical examination of B corp performance.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and innovation activity of Certified B Corps® is comparable to listed companies in the Italian fashion industry.

The study includes a systematic literature review performed on Scopus® and combining keywords related to CSR and the fashion industry. Moreover, the literature review involves empirical analyses performed using a mixed-methods approach. First, a text-based content analysis was carried out on the companies' sustainability reports using the keyword scoring approach. The innovation index was then calculated, and multiple ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regressions were performed.

Based on the data available, it has emerged that Certified B Corps® who pursue a more significant number of SDGs are more likely to implement circular economy principles. Moreover, Certified B Corps® that have higher transparency standards and assume social responsibility practices also have higher innovation activity; in contrast, companies who used CSR only as a marketing tool have lower activity.

The analyses were influenced by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, revealing weaker relationships between the variables, as the analyses involved 2020 data. Furthermore, although the analysis considers the entire population of Certified B Corps® and listed companies in the Italian fashion industry, the size of the sample analyzed influenced the results and insights. Therefore, the analysis does not allow for generalizability. Finally, the study was conducted on a single country whose economic and social contexts have influenced some variables.

The paper highlights some managerial implications. Managers should consider CSR to be an investment and an opportunity to survive the post-COVID-19 pandemic by applying the triple bottom line (TBL) approach in formulating strategies and increasing investments to develop sustainable innovations.

The article explores B Corps, which has received minimal attention in the literature, to propose a deeper understanding of the topic.

This article examines the relationship between stakeholders and shareholders and identifies the key lessons from the B Corp movement that serve as practical tools for businesses – not just B Corps – to be more stakeholder focused.

This article uses an in-depth interview with the author of Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism.

This article focuses on the pros and cons of the B Corp movement. One key point of discussion is that because B Corps focus more on stakeholders in general, they are more likely to attract likeminded employees who also support the companies’ missions, which also leads to greater retention rates. There is also growing interest from the investment community in B Corps and stakeholder-driven companies generally. However, a big challenge for B Corps lies in customer awareness. While many consumers may be buying products from B Corps, they do not know about the certification that links them together. A further conclusion is that even if a company does not want to be a B Corp, they can still benefit from the different stakeholder management tools and processes the movement has developed.

The article argues that businesses can – and should – be responsible and accountable to any stakeholder beyond shareholders. While they do not necessarily need to become B Corps, they can use the accountability and governance tools - like the B Impact Assessment (BIA) and benefit corporation governance - as guides to better manage their businesses to be more sustainable and resilient and to contribute to a better society.

The B Corp movement has emerged as a powerful voice calling for businesses to balance financial returns with environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. The B Corp model shifts conventional business from a shareholder primacy to a stakeholder focus, through novel corporate governance and accountability mechanisms. This article investigates the key lessons that all businesses can learn from the B Corp movement to make the world a better place to live.

This article takes a pracademic approach using academic research on the B Corp movement to generate actionable lessons for businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of the Certified B Corporation (B Corp) structure for a long-term commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) achievements. Organizations of all sizes are now focusing on commitment to achieving social purposes beyond philanthropy and on reporting their CSR performance as a means of accountability.

The authors studied 45 Founding Certified B Corps to check how many had maintained their certification by filing B Impact Reports with B Lab, how many Impact Reports they had filed and if the reports showed progress toward CSR goals.

The results showed that all Founding B Corps submitted multi-year B Impact Reports, made progress toward CSR goals, maintained their commitment to a social contribution and made profit from 2010 to 2015. The B Impact Reports identified their goals and progress in the five Impact areas that were then assessed by B Lab.

The Certified B Corp structure can be confidently used by small companies that desire to do good and want an outside assessor to help establish CSR goals and provide a method for accountability. The reports are published on the B Lab Web site, providing an additional means of publishing CSR accomplishments.

This research provides information for those businesses, particularly small ones, that wish to establish their commitment to CSR in a public way and are certified by a third-party assessor.

Certified B Corporations (B Corps) represent a prominent manifestation of applying stakeholder principles in practice by emphasizing social and environmental performance and striving to create value for all stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate an important question that has been unexplored so far in a vast body of literature on stakeholder management and fast-growing research on B Corps: does the timing of a B Corp’s certification impact the firm’s economic and social performance?

The research on the timing of obtaining B Corp certification is built around three intriguing puzzles: the impact of certification timing on a firm’s economic performance, social performance overall and social performance per stakeholder. In particular, the study examines the relationship between B Corp’s certification date and firms’ financial and social performance between 2017 and 2020.

Based on the data from 168 privately owned B Corps in the USA, the results of our study suggest that while there is no financial benefit associated with earlier certification, there are significant improvements in social performance. Yet, a firm’s social performance improvement is not uniform among its stakeholders.

This study explored the impact of B Corp certification’s timing on the firm’s economic performance within only three years, from 2017 to 2019. This limitation comes from the specifics of the PrivCo database. Measuring a firm economic performance over a longer period may benefit the research on B Corp certification’s timing and which can be a promising path for future research.

When it comes to practical implications, it is important that firms deciding to pursue a B Corp certification understand that certification may not result in an immediate financial impact. This practical implication, though, may need to be calibrated depending on the extent to which participating organizations publicize their certification.

Despite the growing popularity of B Corps in the USA and worldwide, it has been a black box when it comes to understanding when exactly firms should start to pursue B Corp certification to enhance their social value creation. Thus, this study is well timed to contribute to unpacking this black box by showing that the earlier a firm obtains B Corp certification, the more social value it would create. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study to date that explored the social performance implications of timing to certify as a B Corp.

When it comes to practical implications, it is important that firms deciding to pursue a B Corp certification understand that certification may not result in an immediate financial impact. This practical implication, though, may need to be calibrated depending on the extent to which participating organizations publicize their certification.

This paper aims to explore how firms enter or exit B Corp certification faced with the tension between local and B Corp institutions, providing a better understanding of the unique impact of institutional complexity on B Corps' decision-making.

This paper applies multi-case analysis to 20 Chinese firms in various stages of B Corp certification, including eight certified B Corps, six decertified firms and six candidates. The qualitative data was used to code separately for two research questions.

The study findings reveal that: (1) Participants who can obtain expected social and economic benefits by innovating their operational mode to efficiently deal with this tension attempt to continuously pursue B Corp certification. A self-renewal model was developed to show how firms hybridize the two institutional logics; (2) Participants who find it hard to mitigate this tension tend to compromise with the local institution and conform less with the B Corp institution due to high opportunity and accounting costs, low short-term benefits and collective culture.

By highlighting the different responses of firms to institutional complexity, this study contributes to B Corp research, social identity theory and institutional complexity, providing practical implications for B Lab strategies in China.

To fulfill their economic and social missions, it is imperative yet challenging for hybrid ventures to demonstrate legitimacy (fitting in) while simultaneously projecting distinctiveness (standing out). One important means for doing so is by adopting and promoting the recent B Corporation certification. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the emergence of this certification, we argue that when it comes to promoting their businesses, hybrid ventures should not adopt a one size fits all approach. Rather, their promotion strategies need to be adapted to their specific contexts. We theorize and develop a typology of certification promotion strategies for hybrid ventures based on the relative prevalence of other hybrid ventures in the same regions and industries. We conclude by articulating why the B Corporation movement is a rich and underexplored context for scholarship on hybrid ventures, and highlight several promising future research directions.