For the first time, ICDLAB took part at BledCom 2023, the 30th edition of the International Public Relations Research Symposium (June 30 – July 1, 2023), organized by University of Ljubljana Faculty of Social Sciences, which integrates the academic and the professional worlds to talk about sustainability while collecting innovative views on the matter.
All of the presentations were focused on “Public Relations and Sustainability”, a fundamental topic which ICDLAB was called upon to analyze. We decided to concentrate our speech on “The impacts of communication in sustainability in Italy”, trying to underline the increasing importance of sustainability for companies, SMEs and Public Institutions. In fact, while speaking about the increased responsibility attributed to communication for sustainable development, we also wanted to emphasize the process of awareness of communicators in this regard inside our country.
Furthermore, in order to optimize the research, we took into consideration the concept of double-materiality, which requires reporting not only on the impact of the company on sustainability issues, but also on the impact of the sustainability issues on the company.
For our purpose, we took a sample of companies and asked them to write off a short questionnaire about the topic. Eventually, we collected all the answers and analyzed the result. It is possible to summarize the most interesting data as follows:
- 100% of the organizations were familiar with at least one of the sustainability reporting tools;
- 75% of the sample emphasized the benefit of the sustainability reporting process saying that their business risk management and the participation of their stakeholders improved thanks to it;
- 72% declared that they realized of were in the process of realizing a sustainability report;
- 58% used double-materiality in sustainability reporting.
Moreover, the sample underlined the importance of environmental communication as a strategic asset in the phases of building, governing and measuring the organizations’ relationship with stakeholders. In fact, in order to avoid the risk of greenwashing and rapidly adapt to the changing market, companies need to develop solutions, conducts and communication approaches connected to a real corporate sustainability strategy.
Engagement, reporting and measurement were the key areas at the center of a closer step of examination, which consisted of in-depth interviews with 7 organizations.
The same issue has been analyzed in two volumes (published in 2020 and 2022) by the same working group dedicated to environmental communication of Italian Public Relations Federation, integrated with other professionals.
Learn more here