LIBRI DI STEFANO GARZELLA

In the current economic context, Corporate Social Responsibility is an increasingly relevant topic that has swept away the traditional views about firms’ competitiveness, survival and profitability. The rise of sustainability driven pressures and opportunities makes particularly interesting the interplay among management, sustainability and social impacts for scholars, public authorities, policy makers and practitioners. This book aims to investigate the opportunities, the criticalities and the future perspectives in the CSR studies for increasing firm performance and growth.

The paper aims to examine the main changes that performance measurement systems of firms have to face after the adoption of sustainability strategies. The relationship between sustainability strategies and performance measurement systems is analysed along three main dimensions: the reasons that lead to the implementation of sustainability strategies; the changes that these strategies produce within the performance measurement systems; the feedback effects that the revised performance measurement systems determine on the sustainability strategies. We adopted a qualitative research methodology analysing a single case study: ASIA Napoli S.p.A. The case study and the results have been achieved through a theoretical framework built in the first step of the research. The case study allowed to examine the role of legitimacy and reputation when a company chooses to implement sustainability strategies, and confirmed, overall, that the decision to integrate sustainability into business strategy produces changes in performance measurement systems. Our findings showed that the implementation of sustainability strategies produce some changes in the performance measurement systems with regard to the processes and the tools for information and data collection. However, tools for information processing and analysing for decision-making support are less developed. The results also suggested that the measurement of social performance represents an incentive to revise sustainability strategies.

In current economic contexts, one of the most important drivers of firm success is the ability of information systems to answer the call for new relevant data. This request for data is increasingly related to the likelihood of supporting the strategic decision-making process. Consequently, data collection and data analysis processes are evolving from the traditional Enterprise Resource Planning systems to innovative Strategic Intelligence. Despite the growing attention on Intelligence, there is a lack of studies analysing the many critical perspectives and data that firms can consider to embrace Intelligence in strategic management. The literature, from one perspective, does not clearly define the boundaries of the broad concept of Strategic Intelligence, and, from another perspective, does not provide the needed support to the information selection process for decision-making. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to develop an integrated framework that aims to support the commitment of managers to Strategic Intelligence by analysing the implications for information systems. Using a structured literature review, we develop a conceptual comprehensive framework based on five main dimensions: competitive intelligence, market intelligence, resources intelligence, finance intelligence and innovation intelligence. The comprehensive framework provides insights and guidelines for collecting, analysing and explaining data for Strategic Intelligence. Specifically, the paper suggests sources and methods to translate data into effective knowledge for strategic decision-making.

The present paper aims at understanding which "environmental measures" are used in corporate reports and how firms might control the environmental strategy. We propose a framework for the control of the strategic management of environmental issues. This framework is used for an empirical investigation of both social and annual reports of a sample of large public firms. By using content analysis, our findings show: i) a focus on strategy formulation and strategy implementation more than on environmental results; ii) the most relevant key value drivers and performance indicators in firms’ reporting; iii) a positive association between information on environmental value drivers and performance indicators and firm sector. Indeed, we offer some relevant insights on the relative absence of indicators of competitive advantage and on the predominant use of environmental qualitative and/or non-financial measures. This evidence suggests a lack of consideration as for the relationship between environmental strategies and environmental results and, at the same time, a high variability and limited standardization in environmental practices with implications for both internal and external stakeholders’ view. For the internal stakeholders, it seems that the actual environmental strategy control systems need to develop models and tools with reference to the relationship between environmental performance and financial effects. For external ones, the actual limits in the reporting of environmental measures pose the need for an increase in the comparability of environmental performance. Furthermore, by integrating theoretical and empirical findings, we suggest some potential improvements for environmental strategy performance measurement systems.