Do companies integrate sustainability into management systems? Evidence from italian non-financial reports

Non-financial reports are the window on company activities, highlighting the impacts that business management has produced on the environment and society. For sustainability management to be credible, sustainability issues must be not limited to reporting, but they need to be concretely integrated into the various phases that make up the management system. Strategy development, KPIs setting, planning, and monitoring are all phases of the management system that precede and support reporting. Without a real integration in these phases of the management system, sustainability risks are becoming a mere green-washing practice. For this reason, this study aims to investigate to what extent companies integrate sustainability into the management system, analysing the non-financial statements of major Italian companies. Through a qualitative content analysis, performed on the non-financial statements issued from the fiscal year 2017 to 2019, the study showed the trends of sustainability integration in the various phases of the management system of Italian companies, highlighting rooms for improvement both from a managerial and a policy standpoint.