In the pursuit of global sustainability, firms play an increasingly pivotal role. In this scenario, Benefit Corporations aim to seamlessly integrate profit‐making endeavors with sustainable practices. This corporate model has spread around the world and in Italy; it was adopted through Law No. 208/2015 introducing Italian Benefit Corporations (BCs). Italian BCs must produce a Benefit Impact Report (BIR) alongside their financial statements, as a strategic communication tool for demonstrating the company's commitment to advancing common societal benefits to stakeholders. Leveraging stakeholder theory, this study adopts a mixed methodological approach that incorporates manual content analysis of BIRs from 132 Italian BCs, combined with a regression model exploring the impact of firm characteristics on the quality of BIRs. Findings highlight a positive relationship between firm size, financial leverage, and profitability on the quality of BIRs. This study is the first to explore the quality of BIRs and their determinants, providing academic and practical implications.

中文翻译：

---

探索效益影响报告质量的驱动因素和因素：追溯利益相关者理论方法


在追求全球可持续发展的过程中，企业发挥着越来越关键的作用。在这种情况下，共益企业的目标是将盈利努力与可持续实践无缝结合。这种企业模式已经传播到世界各地和意大利;它通过第 208/2015 号法律获得通过，引入了意大利共益公司 （BC）。意大利 BC 必须在财务报表的同时制作一份效益影响报告 （BIR），作为一种战略沟通工具，以表明公司致力于为利益相关者促进共同的社会利益。利用利益相关者理论，本研究采用了一种混合方法，该方法结合了对来自 132 个意大利 BC 的 BIR 的手动内容分析，并结合了探索公司特征对 BIR 质量影响的回归模型。研究结果强调了公司规模、财务杠杆和盈利能力与 BIR 质量之间的正相关关系。本研究首次探讨了 BIR 的质量及其决定因素，提供了学术和实践意义。