The Pathway towards Social Responsibility in Italian Wine Sector: The Feudi di San Gregorio S.p.A. Experience

The traditional business view—which assumes that the main contribution of companies to society is the creation of economic value—is being surpassed by a growing awareness of other values, including social and environmental ones. The diffusion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in all sectors and, in recent time, also in the wine business, has been based on a stakeholder approach. Most of the existing key concepts and tools addressing CSR issues have been developed by, and in, the context of large enterprises. The multitude of Italian wine SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) remain at an early stage of environmental and social management, limited in most cases to local activities, characterized by an occasional approach and unrelated to the business strategy. But, due to increased pressure from stakeholders, environmental and social concern is gradually growing in SMEs as well. Nevertheless, CSR initiatives developed by large companies frequently fail when they are adopted by SMEs and also by the wine SMEs. In recent years, major companies have felt the need to work on CSR and progressively defined and adopted a wide range of instruments such as codes of conduct, process standard, environmental management standard, cause related marketing, corporate social reports, sustainability reports, etc. These instruments more than often represent the final result of experiments established by large sized organizations, often operating in distant countries, which have decided to satisfy the multiple requests from the always more complex context in which they operate. Many companies, therefore, have orientated themselves towards the accomplishment of new objectives centred, not only on gaining profit but, moreover, towards the creation of values: a more extensive value better known as “pluri-dimensional” shared by all the stakeholders within a new interdependent dynamism and inspired by a multitude of references (such as UN Global Compact, AA1000 Guidelines, Global Reporting Initiative, SA8000, etc.). The perception of the concept of corporate responsibility and its possible practical application in a wine-growing company is the subject of continuous debates, always in search of a globally shared interpretation. Sustainable and social initiatives require, in fact, planning, monitoring and enhancement of knowledge. This is a process that requires a tirelessly oriented approach to continuous improvement. The aim of this paper is to delineate efficient ways of promoting CSR, considering wine SMEs’ specific profiles and needs. Moreover, the paper is aimed at highlighting case of Feudi di San Gregorio S.p.A. The company has always been oriented to pursue management models capable of generating social value (in conjunction with that economic) at the systemic level (so-called shared value). This in order to evaluate the contribution that CSR instrument adopted has offered to build organization's sustainability in its three dimensions: economic, environmental and social.