Strategic corporate responsibility. The social dimension of firms

The monograph “Strategic Corporate Responsibility. The social dimension of firms” aims to move the debate on Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability forward by focusing on the opportunities and synergies that these issues can represent for the innovation of business processes and for redefining the competitiveness of firms operating in a fast-changing environment. Its conceptual framework goes beyond the trade-offs between firms’ social and economic performance, highlighting the strategic role of their social dimension, and suggests a positive relationship between sustainability-orientation and the likelihood of efficient and innovative management processes guided by stakeholder accountability principles. The work tries to understand how the configuration of a firm’s social dimension can help identify inclusive corporate governance models, define innovative management processes and re-shape performance measurement systems for the evaluation and assessment of sustainable economic, social and environmental results. The proposed framework is analysed in the cases of two different types of firms - Innovative Startups with a Social Goal and Benefit Corporations - representing two different configurations of the social dimension and two distinct stages of the evolution of firms’ socially oriented activities.