Sustainable or not sustainable? The readiness of Italian companies to the sustainable process integration and reporting

Purpose The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has made the preparation of sustainability reports mandatory also for listed small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that, until now, have prepared sustainability reports on a voluntary basis. This therefore poses a problem of preparation for listed Italian SMEs, especially for those that have not obtained B Corporations certification and therefore already have a certain level of preparation in sustainability reporting. The objective of our analysis is to assess the readiness of listed Italian SMEs to integrate and report on sustainable processes. Design/methodology/approach An analysis was conducted on a sample of Italian listed SME companies with (207) and without (274) B Corporation certification in order to understand the readiness and predisposition of these companies to sustainability, based on reporting. In particular, an index was created and subsequently this index was correlated with the variables related to company size (via the Bravais-Pearson correlation coefficient R). Findings Despite the fact that SMEs achieve the highest absolute value in terms of readiness compared to B corporations, the latter, on average, have a higher readiness to report than SMEs. Furthermore, the companies belonging to the “higher revenues” and “larger employer” clusters present a higher readiness index than the companies belonging to the other clusters, and therefore are smaller in size and revenues. Originality/value The analysis explores for the first time with statistical methodologies the degree of preparedness of listed Italian SMEs that will have to prepare a sustainability report as of 2026, thus highlighting the need for these companies to start on a path towards sustainability.