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This paper aims to reconcile the conflicting understanding on the nexus between corporate governance (CG), corporate financial performance (CFP) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by investigating how companies engage with CSR practices.

The study carries out a multivariate linear regression analysis on a sample of 361 listed companies from five countries in Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

CG mechanisms and CFP have an impact on CSR because they affect social and environmental practices strongly and significantly. Furthermore, the findings describe the capacity of CSR to influence both the CG structure and the CFP.

The present research limits the analysis on the social and environmental performance of companies that communicate their commitment to stakeholders without distinguishing between “greenwashing” companies that implement CSR to improve corporate reputation and those companies that pursue effective societal benefits, taking care of stakeholder relationships.

The CSR approach can drive the CG structure and improve CFP if managers perceive the implementation of sustainable practices as an integrated process rather than a mere outcome.

This paper seeks to disentangle the nexus between CG, CFP and CSR, not yet precisely defined by scholars in the context of five countries in Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to link empowerment to the engagement of low-power stakeholders in the context of marine protected areas (MPAs) to suggest how empowerment-based engagement can be strategised to prevent and overcome management crises within a natural common good and ultimately achieve effective co-management.

This research employs a longitudinal case study methodology. The subject of the study is Torre Guaceto MPA, a natural common good, internationally recognised as a best practice of co-management.

The case study illustrates specific empowerment areas and actions that help move low-power stakeholders to higher levels of engagement to achieve effective co-management. It also suggests that the main strategic implication of empowerment-based engagement is the creation of empowered stakeholders who can serve as catalysts for sustaining the common through the development of entrepreneurial skills that satisfy joint interests.

The applied methodology of a single case and the peculiar conditions intrinsic to this case can be overcome via the inclusion and comparison of other similar commons.

The study provides a stakeholder management model of empowerment-based engagement that offers concrete evidence of empowerment strategies that can be adopted and adapted by the management of similar natural common goods.

The research fills the literature gaps related to understanding the antecedents of engagement and its strategic implications within natural common pool resources.

The aim of this study is twofold. First, the research aims to identify Integrated Thinking (IT) stages of development. Second, the research aims to investigate how IT has reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by accelerating integrated corporate social responsibility (CSR) practises.

The study employs a case study on an Italian multi-utility company, Iren Group. The research method uses triangulated data collected from semi-structured interviews and archival materials and it analyses data with a top-down and bottom-up coding procedure. This allows us to inductively develop a model of IT stages of development and CSR strategic postures as response patterns to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research identifies the developmental paths of IT initiation, IT reactiveness and IT implementation responding to changes and challenges in times of crisis. Furthermore, the research provides stimuli for recovery to overcome periods of crisis through three main CSR strategic postures: stakeholder engagement, flexible proactiveness and democratic durability.

The research suggests that managers can adopt stakeholder engagement, flexible proactiveness and democratic durability as CSR strategic postures in order to integrate CSR practises into the company's DNA and overcome periods of crisis.

This is among the first studies that analyses how IT acts during a crisis in the multi-utility sector. There are three main stages of development, i.e. IT initiation, IT reactiveness and IT implementation, which are characterised by stakeholder engagement, flexible proactiveness and democratic durability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Italian listed companies within the food and beverage (F&B) industry adopt sustainable responsible conduct beyond the boundaries of compliance and which industry-specific matters the companies address as core to their business within a regulatory setting of sustainability disclosure.

This study develops a multiple case study of the five Italian listed companies in the F&B industry and employs a content analysis on their sustainability reports.

This study reveals a policies–practices decoupling along with a means–ends decoupling that jeopardises the commitment to sustainability. The results show a reasonable level of compliance, but companies are at an early stage of coherent and practical application.

This study offers practical avenues for companies, regulators and policy makers. Companies in the F&B industry are guided towards the learning process to shape sustainable, responsible practices at the core of their business, as this study provides a replicable assessment of F&B sustainability issues. Regulators and policy makers are called to monitor the concrete implementation of sustainability issues and improve the understanding of the sustainability agenda to overcome the misalignments that companies are currently facing.

This study provides fertile ground for assessing the degree of maturity in favour of sustainable responsible conduct within the F&B industry and shows the obstacles to this commitment in the mandatory setting of sustainability disclosure.

This systematic literature review (SLR) aims to examine the extent of academic knowledge of sustainability materiality research. There is no academic review of this field; therefore, this study aims to close this research gap.

The paper systematically reviews the existing literature on sustainability materiality research. Papers were qualitatively classified and analysed in accordance with the theoretical underpinning, research methods and academic themes of sustainability materiality research.

The findings of the review show that scholarly work on sustainability materiality has increased exponentially since the 2010s. In terms of research methods, scholars have examined sustainability using content analysis techniques and qualitative approaches. A common theoretical foundation was missing, but an increasing number of articles have been anchored to stakeholder theory. The academic themes have progressively enriched empirical evidence on the evaluation of materiality in sustainability information.

This review can be useful as an academic basis to open avenues for strengthening theoretical and empirical research on new emerging issues regarding double materiality and dynamic materiality.

This paper conducts the first SLR of academic knowledge on sustainability materiality research. Eight academic themes are proposed to classify sustainability materiality. Thus, it is an aid to future research in this area.

The aim of this paper is to provide the state of the art in the academic and professional debate on the disclosure quality of NFI. This analysis is driven by the need to feature the dimensions of NFI quality that should be considered to improve the current regulatory framework towards a more transparent disclosure.

The research is an integrative literature review that assesses and synthesizes the scientific knowledge and the annexed documents collected during the public consultation for the Review of Non-financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) on the disclosure quality of non-financial information (NFI).

Findings show that there is a common consensus between scientific literature and the annexed documents of the consultation process on the Review of the NFRD on the need to enhance a double-materiality perspective, to provide specific contents on sustainability issues, to clarify the relevance of NFI, and to embed NFI into the management report in an integrated manner. Furthermore, there is an alignment related to timeliness in favour of a risk management procedure and a forward-looking approach.

The research engages the debate on the NFI disclosure quality, in light of the recent Review of NRFD and the new Proposal of Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive that extends and enhances the non-binding reporting guidelines of NFI.

The research provides a dashboard of the dimensions of NFI disclosure quality that aggregates the academics' and practitioners' knowledge systematically. It shows the interplay between the scholarly developments and the recent measures arisen in the consultation process to undertake NFI disclosure quality.

The research provides a lens to analyse, classify and interpret the insights emerged during the consultation process of the NFRD.

This study aims to investigate the approaches to and the actions of integrated thinking (IT) based on stakeholder engagement practices to mitigate the perception of IT as an “abstract construct” and to overcome the “silos” thinking of managing, communicating and reporting.

The research develops a single case-study of a leading Italian company in the sustainability setting: Lavazza. The authors gathered in-depth information with semi-structured interviews on their approaches to IT and actions of IT and the related stakeholder engagement practices which involved over time.

This study addresses the concept of IT, arguing for integrated circularity as a strategic mindset, which builds upon open communication and collaborative partnerships with stakeholders for value creation.

The limitations of this study stem from the nature of a single case study, thus the findings are most relevant to those companies operating in comparable sectors with similar historical and organizational characteristics.

The study provides a systematic framework of IT approaches and related actions based on stakeholder engagement practices that define a company as an integrated thinker. This can be used by managers and companies to implement an integrated logic of thinking and reporting.

This is a pioneering study in this area as there are very few ones that take into account the relationship between the IT of design and reporting from a stakeholder perspective. The more IT is embedded in the business, the fuller the consideration of key stakeholders’ interests is incorporated as a relevant part of conducting business.