Pursuing a strategy of ‘common benefit’ in business: The adoption of the benefit corporation model in Italy

A benefit corporation (BC) is a for-profit company that pursues common benefits for stakeholders. Adopting institutional theory, we analyse the characteristics of the company in relation to the common benefits a BC pursue and how BC model fits with corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices defined in literature. BCs were introduced by a 2016 law in Italy, that was the first European country to approve legislation for BCs, under which a company must indicate its specific common benefit in its articles of association (AoAs). We run a multivariate regression on data from a content analysis on companies' AoA and then use questionnaire data to perform a cluster analysis and interviews to provide additional information. We show that larger and profitable firms focus on customers, while mature firm focus on the environment in the definition of common benefit in AoA. There is resistance to profit sharing. Industry and location specific are important drivers. Among first evidences, it is interesting to see that the most frequent perceived advantage of BC status is differentiation, BC and BCorp do not in practice overlap, and ownership is the main promoter of the change to become BC.