Social Impact and Online Communication in B-Corp Companies: evidences from EU and USA

Today companies operate in a context in which addressing sustainability issues is gaining an increasing strategic relevance. There is an important shift in business focus that is empowering companies to not only declare their intent to be ethical firms which do good while making a profit, but also to submit proof of that commitment by outside evaluators (Wilburn and Wilburn 2014) and through the assessment of their social impact. Furthermore, companies that have a strong Corporate Social Responsibility focus are moving toward new forms of organizations such as Benefit Corporations, that are obligated to pursue a public benefit in addition to the core responsibility to return profits to shareholders (Hiller, 2013), or are becoming Certified B Corporations so they must prove to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance.