FAGGIOLI MATTIA – Forlì Campus
The Non-financial Reporting in Italian SMEs. The Labomar, Euro Cosmetic and Assiteca Cases”
Stakeholders’ interest is shifting towards social and environmental issues. This involves a change in the information which organizations decide to pass on to their external stakeholders. In recent years, non-financial information has extremely increased: both because of the information needs of stakeholders, and because of the increased sensitivity to the corporate social responsibility (CSR). Only financial information is no longer enough. These new requirements have led over the years to develop new strategies and reports for the company balance. In this regard, the most complete document is the Integrated Report.
These reports are crucial for determining the value of intangibles. Financial statements are not suitable to evaluate and represent these resources. More and more often the business performance is intangible, and this increases the relevance of new reports. In addition to the realization of the outputs, companies produce other results such as the creation of jobs and the protection of the environment. These are some elements which are fundamental for the value created by the business. The decision to draw up one of the above mentioned documents is voluntary in most cases, except for some companies that exceed the limits provided by D.Lgs. no. 254/2016. Non-financial reporting is a topical issue, with significant changes in recent years that will be described and analysed.
After an overview of the topic, this paper focuses on describing, both in theory and practice, how Italian SMEs are facing the development of Integrated Report, supported by some case studies. Showing the advantages, but also the difficulties they may encounter.