Social reporting and voluntary disclosure in Italian Credit Cooperative Banks

According to the business and managerial literature, nowadays it is increasingly important for enterprises to carry out development processes according to ethical principles and behaviors. With this in mind, the article focuses on a specific type of firms: cooperative credit banks. They are habitually seen as institutions which show a clear orientation toward ethics because their main objective is to provide direct benefits to internal and external stakeholders. To this aim, through an empirical investigation of their Websites, we analyze the propensity of these banks to provide Social Reports. Within the stakeholder management theory, the attention to mission, the number of stakeholders identified, the prospects of social reporting and their structure, and other aspects, are analyzed. Although many researches show that banking systems with a high number of cooperative banks can handle future potential periods of financial stress more efficiently, on the empirical side, the survey highlights that these banks are not ready yet to address the growing audience of potential customers who seem to be more interested in the respect of ethical and social conditions. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.