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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the multidimensional nature of social and nonprofit organisations' accountability and performance measurement systems (PMSs). It further considers how these systems help in defining outcome performance indicators downward to beneficiaries

The paper discusses participatory action research (PAR) within an Italian social enterprise. In order to increase dialogue, participation and engagement, the researchers adopted focus groups as a preferred method of investigation and conducted a broad documental analysis from July 2016 to March 2018. The paper discusses the gathered data in light of the social impact value chain as well as the multiple-constituency approach.

The findings support the idea that social and nonprofit organisations lack the expertise and resources to evaluate outcomes and impact; however, through PAR, the organisation defined their desired outcomes and ascertained which internal output measures were most likely to be correlated with these outcomes. Moreover, the findings highlight that nonprofits develop outcome measurements less frequently because they have more control over their immediate activities and outputs.

This research suggests the need to reinforce lateral and downward accountability based on mission and mission-based activities in order to make the performance management system of social and nonprofit organisation linked to the organisational strategies.

This paper innovates methodologically in two directions: 1) it adopts action research as a qualitative method, allowing the researcher to generate solutions to collectively-identified problems and 2) the paper's arguments are strongly supported by rich empirical exploration that occurred over a period of 20 months in an Italian social enterprise.

This paper discusses the current state of research into Directive 2014/95/EU and non-financial disclosure (NFD), with the aim of offering a future research agenda.

The authors have conducted a systematic literature review of 78 studies spanning seven years (2014–2020) that address Directive 2014/95/EU.

The literature review revealed four main avenues for future research. First, future studies could focus on addressing issues related to the EU Directive's potential impacts, both in terms of NFD and companies' financial performance. Second, because context plays an important role in defining the regulation's impact, future research should consider these contextual factors in NFD. Third, further research should investigate the interplay between the binding requirements of the Directive and the non-binding guidelines suggested to implement it. Finally, future research would do well to employ additional theoretical approaches in order to interpret the Directive's diverse effects for various countries, organisations and timelines.

This research agenda is intended to help scholars in this field to understand what has yet to be known in order to develop a complete understanding of the EU Directive on non-financial information disclosure.

Focussing on the Directive's implementation across countries and organisations with a longitudinal approach, this paper could indicate whether or not mandatory reporting enhances non-financial information disclosure and consequently, organisational actions. This work could inform both companies' and policymakers' approach to disclosure, whether mandatory or otherwise.

To date, many studies have focussed on specific issues regarding the EU Directive. This paper, however, presents the first systematic literature review considering the current state of research into the EU Directive, thus drawing a future research agenda.

This paper aims to investigate the application of the Italian Banking Association (ABI) industry-specific reporting standard in microfinance institutions by determining whether or not a banking sector reporting standard can enhance non-financial reporting (NFR) quality and volume to meet stakeholders’ information needs in the specific setting investigated.

This paper develops an analysis of available ABI documents from 2006 to 2013 to conduct a content analysis of the quality and volume of the NFR of 98 Italian cooperative banks (CBs) during the 2008–2009 ABI implementation year. These data are analysed using two regression models to investigate the quality and volume of NFR disclosures.

The findings suggest that for CBs in the Italian banking sector, the information provided in the non-financial reports in adherence to the ABI sector reporting standard is relevant in terms of both volume and quality. However, when investigating specific categories of disclosure such as the community, the relevance of the ABI reporting standard is fairly low. The authors question the “one-size-fits-all” approach favouring a more sector-tailored approach to ensure that the NFR covers key sectoral concerns.

The high heterogeneity in the sector could negatively affect the capability of sector-specific standards to truly foster reliable, complete and extensive NFR. Therefore, NFR standard-setters, such as the International Sustainability Standards Board, should consider these heterogeneities.

Reporting standardisation should be multi-voiced and include different – even contrasting – perspectives to promote expert and non-expert engagements.

This paper focuses on hybrid organisations and shows how the theoretical approach of dialogic accountability can improve the quality of sector-specific reporting standards.

Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of “empathy” and “communal emotions” developed by Edith Stein (1917, 1922), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the co-existence both of the legitimacy and accountability perspectives in voluntarily delivered social and environmental reporting (SER), based on different “levels of empathy” towards different stakeholders.

The paper adopts an interpretive research design, drawn from Stein’s concept of empathy by using a mixed-method approach. A manual content analysis was performed on 393 cooperative banks’ (CB) social and environmental reports from 2005 to 2013 in Italy, and 14 semi-structured interviews.

The results show that CBs voluntarily disclose information in different ways to different stakeholders. According to Stein, the phenomenological concept of empathy, and its understanding within institutions, allows us to interpret these multiple perspectives within a single social and environmental report. Therefore, when the process of acquiring knowledge in the CB–stakeholder relationship is complete and mentalised (level 3, re-enactive empathy), the SER holds high informative power, consistent with the accountability perspective; on the contrary, when this process is peripheral and perceptional (level 1, basic empathy), the SER tends to provide more self-assessment information, attempting to portray the bank in a positive light, which is consistent with the legitimacy perspective.

The concept of empathy introduced in this paper can assist in interpreting the interactions between an organisation and different stakeholders within the same social and environmental report. Moreover, the approach adopted in this paper considers different stakeholders simultaneously, thus responding to previous concerns regarding the lack of focus on multiple stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed analysis of social and environmental reporting (SER) evolution, i.e. how and why the SER evolved over time in a cooperative bank in Italy.

The paper is based on a qualitative fieldwork case study conducted from 2011 to 2015. Information and data were collected through several methods including: interviews with managers involved in the SER’s process; analysis of the SER-related documents; analysis of the website; and observations in the field. The analysis of the empirical evidence draws on the institutional logic (IL) perspective, which provides theoretical insights to interpret the role of the contrasting institutional forces in the evolution of SER.

The empirical analysis unveils three different stages in the evolution of SER: the “birth” whereby a new form of social reporting was initiated; the “development” through which SER was implemented to become a formal component of the organizational management; and the “de-structuring” when the SER was gradually de-composed. This gradual de-structuring, as well as the initiation and implementation processes, was influenced by different institutionally infused rationalities and logics. These institutionally infused rationalities and logics, along with the specific organizational and contextual events, provided the resources, and created the space and opportunity, for the SER-related changes to occur.

The analysis offers theoretical insights to understand “how” (i.e. processes) and “why” (i.e. the conditions under which) SER gradually evolved, i.e. emerged, was constructed and developed during the phases of implementation and post-implementation. Furthermore, it is shown that SER is multifunctional in nature and unveils how and why these multiple functions change over time. Finally, the analysis provides a theoretical contribution by illuminating the role that different and contrasting ILs play in driving the adoption of organizational practices.

As the comparability concept has recently garnered increased attention of policymakers and standard setters in the sustainability reporting (SR) arena, this paper aims to provide a reflexive viewpoint of this concept in this context.

To inform the authors’ viewpoint and disentangle the concept of comparability into different facets, the authors review policymakers’ and standard setters’ (including the Global reporting initiative) comparability principles, as well as relevant studies in the field. To provide insights into the different ways in which the comparability facets can be approached, the authors use multi-perspective reflexive practices and focus on the multiple purposes that reporting can serve. To empirically animate the authors’ reflection on the facets, the authors analyse the sustainability disclosures of two Italian banks over three years.

This study reveals that three facets form valuable starting points for extending the understanding of the meanings the comparability concept can carry in the SR arena. These facets are materiality and comparability, benchmarking/monitoring and comparability and operationalisation and comparability.

This study is intended to elicit policymakers’ and standard setters’ thoughts on the role of comparability and its complexities in SR.

By taking a critical and reflexive approach, the authors encourage policymakers and standard setters to reconsider the comparability principle, so it effectively embeds the accountability purpose of SR.

In this paper, the authors propose three facets for disentangling the concept of comparability.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage a discussion of the implementation of management control systems (MCSs) in the MCS-strategy relationship. Borrowing from the literature on software development, the authors propose two archetypes of MCS implementation – waterfall and agile – and employ them to understand how the MCS-strategy fit unfolds over time.

The authors empirically ground the archetypes on two exploratory case studies based on the collection of extensive qualitative data.

The authors show that MCSs change not only in relation to strategy, but also in response to an autonomous source: implementation. These two implementation archetypes differ in their degrees of specification, in the ways in which the transitions among their implementation phases occur and in the sources and ways in which their feedback loops affect the MCSs; however, both shed light on the dynamic dimension of fit and show that the fit should be assessed over time.

The two archetypes are derived from two exploratory cases. Further research may both strengthen the framework by testing the validity of the archetypes for a wider set of empirical cases and enrich the framework by investigating the determinants of agile and waterfall MCS implementation.

The introduction of MCS implementation to the determinants of fit or misfit provides practitioners with a further interpretation and an action driver for fit or misfit. MCS implementation should be coordinated with the pace of change of strategy and should be changed in relation to the possibility for an organisation to move from a process- to a people-centred system (or vice versa).

The authors propose two archetypes of MCS implementation, both of which support the empirical interpretation and theoretical reconceptualisation of the concept of the MCS-strategy fit in terms of dynamic fit.

This paper aims to discuss the notion of social impact of social impact measurement in social enterprises by supporting the multiple-constituency theory as a contribution to this under-theorised issue. Moreover, the paper proposes the stakeholder-based approach as the most appropriate solution for selection among metrics related to the growing number of social impact measurements.

The paper proposes a review of social impact measurement studies by considering contributions from both academia and practitioners, while providing a reassessment and conceptualisation of this issue in terms of the multiple-constituency theory.

The paper criticises the “golden standard approach” to social impact measurement according to which social enterprises have to find one standardised metric capable of determining an organisation’s real impact. The golden standard approach promotes a more “political view” of social enterprises, according to which multiple stakeholders set performance standards based on their viewpoints regarding the measurement’s purposes.

The paper responds to the urgent call to define a theoretical framework that might guide social impact measurement, seeking to avoid the current lack of order and transparency in existing practices that could serve as a vehicle for camouflaging corporate social un-sustainability.

The multiple-constituency approach should discourage organisations from opportunistically selecting a social impact measurement with the sole purpose of proving a higher impact, as, within the proposed new perspective, social impact metrics are no longer managed independently by the social enterprises themselves. Instead, these metrics are defined and constructed with the stakeholders. As a result, social enterprises’ manipulative intentions should diminish.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal and external factors simultaneously drive firms to adopt green supply chain (GSC) initiatives and to construct a comprehensive research model by drawing upon institutional theory, stewardship theory, and view of performance.

The data collected from 380 manufacturers in the electrical and electronics industries in Taiwan were analyzed via structural equation modeling and bootstrapping.

First, institutional pressures affect the GSC initiatives of firms. Second, institutional pressures influence the environmental stewardship behaviors (ESBs) of managers. Third, the ESBs of managers affect the GSC initiatives of firms. Fourth, the GSC initiatives of firms influence their environmental performance, economic performance, and competitiveness. Fifth, the bootstrapping results reveal that institutional pressures indirectly affect the GSC initiatives of firms through the ESBs of managers.

Environmental sustainability has intensified the need for firms to develop a corporate culture. Future research can investigate the relationship among the institutional pressures, greening corporate culture, and GSC initiatives of firms.

Those managers facing institutional pressures must continually focus on the effects of external factors on the GSC initiatives of their firms. They must also increase their commitment and support to such initiatives to attain favorable levels of environmental performance, economic performance, and competitiveness.

This study integrates four streams of literature on institutional theory, stewardship theory, GSC initiatives, and view of performance. Apart from analyzing field- and organization-level data simultaneously, this paper is also the first to demonstrate the relationships among institutional pressures, ESBs of managers, GSC initiatives, and firm performance.