Giuseppe Scandurra

Citizens’ growing sensitivity to sustainability issues requests EU authorities to issue increasingly stringent regulations for companies to delimit the concept of sustainable development. The CSRD is the latest development of an exhaustive framework concerning the provision of a wide range of issues. Although the CSRD refers to specific standards to show companies’ compliance level with the ESG, it does not ensure they consider sustainability as a strategic lever capable of generating competitive value and transforming business models. For this reason, accountability scholars are promoting a more complex tool named integrated reporting, finalized to integrate financial with non-financial information. This study aims to evaluate the consistence of sustainability disclosure among the largest twenty EU banks with the integrated reporting guiding principles and indirectly the qualitative level of voluntary disclosure. The interest in the banking sector is linked to their strong direct sustainability impact, but also to the leading role towards the multitude of companies borrowing money, inducing them to follow sustainability principles. The findings of the study show that the consistence of non-financial disclosure with principles are quite high, although wide differences among banks exist, as well as among the issues considered. Particularly, the wider gaps concern the outlook and the formal and methodological quality. Many implications emerge from this research stimulating policy makers to propose tools encouraging banks to improve the linkages among financial and non-financial disclosure.

Energy poverty (EP) is considered an urgent challenge, intensified by rising energy costs, economic inequality, and the transition toward green energy, which involves many Western countries. By referring to Italy, this study employs machine learning algorithms (MLAs) to predict and classify EP using official Household Budget Survey (HBS) data. To evaluate EP, the study compares several MLAs alongside three expenditure-based indicators proposed in three seminal articles by Hills, Faiella and Lavecchia, and Betto et al. Among these, the indicator developed by Betto et al., which accounts for regional and socioeconomic disparities, consistently outperforms the others across all MLAs, demonstrating higher accuracy, precision, and recall. This ensures a more comprehensive identification of energy-poor households. The analysis highlights the significant impact of data imbalance on model performance, emphasizing the need for techniques such as SMOTE and undersampling. The superior performance of the Betto et al. indicator underscores its potential as a benchmark for EP measurement, providing a valuable tool for policymakers to design targeted interventions, allocate resources effectively, and support a just and sustainable energy transition. The study reinforces the importance of dynamic, data-driven approaches to address EP, and calls for improved data collection to enhance prediction accuracy and policy effectiveness.

Purpose: The introduction of compulsory rules on sustainable development at the company level poses the consequent problem of analyzing the actions and behaviors carried out by companies also in non-financial directions. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices serve as a basic disclosure tool to examine these actions. Nevertheless, a high risk of greenwashing persists in the banking sector. For this reason, more comprehensive investigations into non-financial disclosure may be necessary, such as adherence to the integrated reporting framework. Design/methodology/approach: To evaluate banks' non-financial disclosure, a dual-method approach is adopted. Firstly, the study employs a novel indicator that encompasses various dimensions of corporate sustainability and green strategies. Secondly, to map disclosure patterns that are comparable and repeatable across banks, a quantitative component applies natural language processing, including cosine similarity and clustering. Findings: Although the study reveals that banks exhibit a high level of ESG disclosure, the degree of consistency with the guiding principles of the integrated reporting is quite weak. The main gaps concern readability, accessibility and performance, as well as strategic objectives, and the explanation of how banks reconcile economic and sustainability aspects when generating value. Hence, the study confirms the findings of previous investigations, which indicate that the risks of greenwashing remain high, despite the introduction of new mandatory reporting rules. Originality/value: While ESG standards are the most widely adopted benchmark for assessing non-financial disclosure in the context of sustainable development, they may not be sufficient to evaluate the green behaviors of companies and banks in particular. A gap risks emerging between the close pursuit of ESG criteria and the pursuit of a broader long-term sustainability strategy, minimizing greenwashing practices. This is one of the few studies that try to highlight this possible disconnection.

The adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices is spreading rapidly among all types of companies. Although many scholars are interested in the topic, there is not yet a shared framework exploring the factors that encourage companies—in particular, small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs)—to adopt ESG criteria and the possible expected benefits. This is probably due to the extreme heterogeneity that characterizes such companies. The contribution of this study derives from the investigation of two factors considered decisive for SMEs' ability to adopt ESG practices and improve their perception of competitiveness: artificial intelligence and sustainability management. For this purpose, the well‐known method of partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to a homogeneous population of SMEs located in Italy. The results show that the two investigated factors increase the likelihood of adopting ESG criteria and directly affect competitive perspectives. In turn, the environment and governance pillars, but not the “S” pillar, affect the competitive perspectives.