The impact of social reporting on the performance of Italian social enterprises

Abstract

The Third Sector is a crucial social and economic system at an international level in supplying pub-lic services. The Italian law no 155/2006 and the consequent operating decrees have formally rec-ognised the social entrepreneurship, requiring social enterprises (SEs), among other things, to provide specific disclosure in relation to the social impact of their operations. This paper aims to in-vestigate whether there is a relation between the “quality” of SEs’ social reporting and financial per-formance. In relation to this, the research has examined the SEs instituted as limited liabilities companies. The research contributes to the development of this field of studies, concluding that there is no cause-effect relation neither in the hypothesis that the quality of social reports affects the financial performance, neither in the hypothesis that financial performance affects the quality of so-cial reports.