Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility in the Italian wine sector through websites (original) (raw)
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Sustainability
This study aimed to investigate the awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among wineries located in the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) (1), (2) the obstacles (3) and market drivers of its implementation (4), the practices and range of actions that are concretely implemented in the field of CSR (5), the implications that this management approach can have on company performance (6), and the communication tools used. The methodology adopted is based on a qualitative approach integrated with quantitative measures. In total, 28 wineries participated in the study. The results show that all of the wineries were aware of the importance of implementing CSR, although they mainly refer to environmental issues. Sponsorship in fair trade activities is considered the most relevant market driver, while Italian consumers are generally perceived as not particularly interested in sustainable wine production. The practices implemented are mainly focused on reduc...
Springer eBooks, 2023
The tourism and hospitality industry claims to embrace the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) but it seems unclear how and if companies integrate CSR activities into the core business and how they demonstrate real impacts and positive changes. The purpose of this research is to understand how Asian luxury hotels communicate about their CSR policies, practices and standards. It gives insights of best practices of CSR from luxury hotel groups that operate predominantly in Asia. The findings reveal that CSR is a blurry subject and there is a lack of an overall accepted definition and guidelines. The reporting of CSR activities by the Asian luxury hotels includes various overall activities, many of which are normal business practices. Many of these hotel groups are adopting international standards and most of them underline the importance of the environment and society. The study concludes that the motivation for CSR is oriented towards sustaining the basis for their operations. The outcome of the research suggests that further studies should analyze different hotel segments, such as local hotels or small-medium size hotels, in one particular country or comparing between various countries.
Scoring CSR Reporting in Listed Companies - Evidence from Italian Best Practices
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2012
In the last decade, political pressure from international organisms has contributed to the divulgation and the adoption of social accountability practices. Using an inductive method, this research examines the state of the art of best social reporting practices carried out by Italian listed companies, by scoring and assessing the different maturity levels in application of the principles required by the main reporting models mentioned and by exploring the indicators disclosed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. We analyze CSR reporting by Italian companies making up the FTSE ECPI Leaders Index of the Italian Stock Exchange. The findings show an overall good level of disclosure. The data confirm the results of previous studies as they highlight the escalation in sustainability reporting: both the quantity and quality of sustainability information are increasing. However, the results may raise doubts that companies consider CSR as a 'fashion'. In fact, one of the criticisms levelled against CSR is that information is self-gathered and self-reported. More mandatory rules may improve transparency; however these may compromise the CSR concept, so it is necessary to further investigate the findings.
Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Performance in the Spanish Wine Sector
Sustainability, 2020
This paper analyzes the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of a sample of wineries in Spain and its effect on the companies’ performance. We used a questionnaire created with a validated scale that includes environmental and social dimensions. The final sample was made up of 127 firms that participated in the National Wine Fair (FENAVIN) in 2019, and this was analyzed using a cluster analysis and means contrast to verify whether a CSR-performance relationship exists. The performance was measured using the average return on assets (ROA) for the prior three years. The results obtained do not support the general opinion that enterprises involved with CSR achieve better results. On the contrary, we found that wineries that are more environmentally responsible are the least profitable and that those with more socially responsible behavior do not have a significant CSR-performance relationship.
The AMFITEATRU …, 2011
The purpose of this research was to establish the degree of transparency concerning the communication of the information regarding the corporate social responsibility by the Romanian companies listed. The study used as a sample the listed companies in the first part of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Considering the fact that in Romania there is no mandatory reporting of such information, we examined the extent to which public companies in Romania have, voluntarily, on their sites, such disclosures. As a research framework we used the model proposed by Dahlsrud (2008). According to this model, CSR-type information can be classified into five dimensions: the environmental dimension, social dimension, economic dimension, the "stakeholders" dimension and voluntary dimension. After conducting site investigation we made a classification of their degree of transparency (dependent variable). For this variable we tested the association with the type of ownership and activity (independent variables).
J. of Health Science
The traditional business view-which assumes that the main contribution of companies to society is the creation of economic value-is being surpassed by a growing awareness of other values, including social and environmental ones. The diffusion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in all sectors and, in recent time, also in the wine business, has been based on a stakeholder approach. Most of the existing key concepts and tools addressing CSR issues have been developed by, and in, the context of large enterprises. The multitude of Italian wine SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) remain at an early stage of environmental and social management, limited in most cases to local activities, characterized by an occasional approach and unrelated to the business strategy. But, due to increased pressure from stakeholders, environmental and social concern is gradually growing in SMEs as well. Nevertheless, CSR initiatives developed by large companies frequently fail when they are adopted by SMEs and also by the wine SMEs. In recent years, major companies have felt the need to work on CSR and progressively defined and adopted a wide range of instruments such as codes of conduct, process standard, environmental management standard, cause related marketing, corporate social reports, sustainability reports, etc. These instruments more than often represent the final result of experiments established by large sized organizations, often operating in distant countries, which have decided to satisfy the multiple requests from the always more complex context in which they operate. Many companies, therefore, have orientated themselves towards the accomplishment of new objectives centred, not only on gaining profit but, moreover, towards the creation of values: a more extensive value better known as "pluri-dimensional" shared by all the stakeholders within a new interdependent dynamism and inspired by a multitude of references (such as UN Global Compact, AA1000 Guidelines, Global Reporting Initiative, SA8000, etc.). The perception of the concept of corporate responsibility and its possible practical application in a wine-growing company is the subject of continuous debates, always in search of a globally shared interpretation. Sustainable and social initiatives require, in fact, planning, monitoring and enhancement of knowledge. This is a process that requires a tirelessly oriented approach to continuous improvement. The aim of this paper is to delineate efficient ways of promoting CSR, considering wine SMEs' specific profiles and needs. Moreover, the paper is aimed at highlighting case of Feudi di San Gregorio S.p.A. The company has always been oriented to pursue management models capable of generating social value (in conjunction with that economic) at the systemic level (so-called shared value). This in order to evaluate the contribution that CSR instrument adopted has offered to build organization's sustainability in its three dimensions: economic, environmental and social.
Philanthropic Wine Firms and Their CSR Communication
Social Sustainability in the Global Wine Industry
Philanthropy involves voluntarily donating a business's resources to others and is a growing practice in the wine industry. Wineries are motivated to engage in philanthropic activities for different reasons, and these motivations lead to decisions about how to communicate philanthropic activity to stakeholders, also referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. This chapter reviews the literature pertaining to philanthropy and CSR communication. An examination of whether philanthropically active wine firms are communicating their actions to stakeholders, and if so, the media channels used, is discussed. Quantitative data was collected from wine firms in France, Spain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand using an online questionnaire.
CSR perception and financial performance: Evidences from Italian and UK asset management companies
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2019
This work fits into a stream of research dealing with the role of the Internet and social networks as effective disclosure tools. We argue that the asset management company's (AMC) self-presentation, its product disclosure, and how it communicates in the social media can be positively associated to its performance. In this paper we have studied these relationships on 21 Italian and UK AMCs in the EUROSIF Panel by adopting an experimental study asking business ethics course university students to evaluate the AMCs' ethical commitment. Our research shows that a high corporate social performance (CSP) disclosure through Web and social media is positively associated to AMCs' economic performance. Even a high perceived coherency between AMCs' self-presentation and ethical financial product communication can enhance AMCs' financial success. In reverse, a high perceived coherency between financial products and corporate social responsibility communication through Web and social media networks does not seem to improve AMCs' economic performance.
This paper tries to examine the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and some Corporate Financial Performance (CFP). CSR is measured by an index of corporate social responsibility disclosure while ROA, ROS and ROE are used to measure CFP. The CSR disclosure index gives information about the engagement of firm in corporate, CSR, and staff strategy, social, community, and political investment, environment, consumer, and supplier awareness, voluntary reports and certifications. We test our hypothesis on a sample of Italian listed firms, specifically, our sample is composed by companies listed on the STAR market and a sample of control, composed by the 20 listed companies with the higher capitalization. Therefore, our sample is compodes by 84 corporations. We have hand-collected the data from the annual report and any other available document present in the institutional website of each corporation, for the 2012-2013 financial year. We use the Tobit Regression Model, whose analyses were performed using the statistical software SPSS© and Gretl©. The result of this study indicates that we cannot state that there is a positive relationship between CSR and CFP.