Sustainability Practices and Greenwashing Risk in the Italian Poultry Sector: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract

Despite the growing recognition of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework by companies as a transparency tool to meet stakeholders’ requirements, a universal standard for ESG reporting is currently lacking, potentially fueling greenwashing phenomena. This study focuses on one of the leading sectors dominated by big players at the Italian level, the poultry sector, with the aim of analyzing how the green transition can be integrated into ESG company identity. This study employs, for the first time, the grounded theory (GT) methodology to investigate how sustainability is “perceived” and “practiced” by the entrepreneurs of the Italian poultry supply chain. The results provide insights into how changes toward greater sustainability can be transformed into concrete pathways that function within the organizational design. The outcome could be the reconfiguration of the organizational design, whereby the practice becomes incisive, or its circumvention, whereby the practice is adopted only superficially. The development of a more standardized ESG reporting system, along with incentivization measures and policies supporting small and medium-sized agrifood companies in the adoption of sustainability practices, could contribute to overcoming the “detachment” between the sustainability “perceived” and “practiced” by agrifood companies and to effectively adopting environmental sustainability as a development strategy.