{"id":1288,"date":"2017-12-21T16:29:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T15:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frjournal.eu\/journal\/?p=1288"},"modified":"2017-12-22T10:26:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T09:26:32","slug":"put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is-the-difference-between-real-commitment-to-sustainability-and-mere-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frjournal.eu\/journal\/2017\/12\/21\/put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is-the-difference-between-real-commitment-to-sustainability-and-mere-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"Put Your Money where Your Mouth is: The Difference between Real Commitment to Sustainability and Mere Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bini Laura, Bellucci Marco, Giunta Francesco\/\u00a0Financial Reporting<\/a>,\u00a0Riviste<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0Fascicolo: 2-2016<\/p>\n

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Companies exhibit growing interest in sustainability rhetoric. Such an interest is alternatively justified by a company\u2019s need to address legitimacy instances, rather than to satisfy stakeholders\u2019 requests about its sustainability performance. Whatever the case, a main debated issue concerning sustainability rhetoric deals with the difficulties in understanding whether companies\u2019 commitment towards sustainability is \u201creal\u201d, or it only consists of \u201cempty words\u201d that hide opportunistic strategies. Our paper contributes to this debate, proposing a methodological approach, which is based on a company\u2019s business model (BM) representation. We argue that the inclusion of adequate sustainability information in a company\u2019s BM representation can testify to a real company\u2019s engagement, as it illustrates how sustainability affects its value creation process. Compared to extant methodological proposals, mainly based on linguistic analyses, our approach does not require specific competences to be applied. Moreover, it saves user\u2019s time, as it allows the assessment of entire company\u2019s sustainability rhetoric through the analysis of the information reported in its BM. Our approach is consistent with previous contributions that propose a company\u2019s BM as a representation device able to illustrate strategic information that cannot be represented in the traditional corporate reporting. Our approach proposes a possible answer to address the challenges faced by regulators and standard setters involved in the regulation of sustainability disclosure. Such approach has found a first step of implementation in the UK, where since 2013, listed companies are requested to describe their BM in Strategic Reports.<\/p>\n

Keywords:\u00a0<\/strong>Sustainability rhetoric, business model, corporate social responsibility, non-financial disclosure, mining industry<\/p>\n

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