Transformations  in
Business & Economics

DIGITALISED AND SUSTAINABLE? HIGH IMPACT GENERATION PATHWAYS AND MOSTLY ADOPTED PRACTICES AND POLICIES OF SMALL-SIZE CERTIFIED BENEFIT CORPORATIONS OF THE IT SECTOR
Alberto Ruozzi Lopez, Carmen Paradinas-Marquez, Jose Antonio Vicente-Pascual

ABSTRACT: The generation of impacts of small-size firms in the information technology (IT) sector is increasingly relevant; nonetheless, scarce evidence about them has been obtained. To explore this, the B Corp database is used with the aim of identifying the following: a) the configurations of focus on the impact dimensions of employees, customers, communities, governance, and the environment consistently more adopted by small-size certified benefit corporations (CBCs) that generate high levels of positive impacts; b) the practices and policies they have most significantly adopted in every dimension. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with a sample of 198 small-size CBCs in the IT sector, six configurations of focus on impact dimensions that led them to obtain high impact scores are identified. The heterogeneity of configurations, practices and policies that are significantly more adopted are coherent with the natural resource-based view and stakeholder theories, pointing to the need for small-size firms to identify synergistic effects to improve the impact generated on the stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:  IT sector, Certified Benefit Corporations, impact generation, digitalisation, sustainability.

JEL classification:  M13, O32, C35.