In 2015, Italy introduced a new legal form—“benefit corporation” (società benefit)—that provides legal status to companies that have one or more common benefit objectives in addition to the profit-seeking goal. Italian benefit corporations are obligated by law to operate in a responsible, sustainable, and transparent way and to include the interests of different stakeholders in their corporate strategy, such as employees, customers, suppliers, and civil society. Italy became the first European country to introduce a legal framework for BCs and thus played the role of pioneer in the European context. This study examines the Italian case by applying textual statistical analysis on 125 benefit corporations' public mission statements, identifying the “benefit” concept emerging from the mission statements. The findings confirm the proposition of BC as companies with underlying sustainability or community-driven values and categorize Italian BC in terms of promotion of individual skills, development of a new business model, and service to society. Although the study does not show the evolution in time of Italian BCs' mission statements, it provides evidence of imprinting identity by the founders or owners in the first years, where the role of owners and managers of SMEs significantly influences organizations' engagement in social and environmental issues. This study contributes to the debate on the content of mission statements by giving empirical evidence about this new form of business, and it provides some practical implications for managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.
