Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment The Italian Experience in Social Reporting: An Empirical Analysis Davide Secchi* Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy ABSTRACT This analysis tries to discover an empirical validation to back up the hypothesis that the Italian phenomenon of social reporting has changed with regard to the past and is growing in importance. After considering the evolution of Italian literature on the issue, the paper tries to find connections between this literature and social reporting practices. Empirical findings are based on 62 Italian social reports. The paper tries to answer three questions: (a) what kind of organization publishes social reports; (b) what are the main differences, if any, between different reports belonging to diverse organizations; (c) which are the leading models. Social reports have been sorted according to three main issues: report objectives, emerging models and stakeholder mapping. Collected data suggest that there is a common ground for organizations in socially responsible behaviour, but also that this common ground fits the need of every single organization. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Received 10 March 2005; revised 20 May 2005; accepted 8 June 2005 Keywords: social reporting; corporate social responsibility; Italian enterprises; stakeholder analysis; empirical analysis Introduction S OCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ARE GAINING GREAT importance in the European debate on corporate strategy. Ethical and social concerns character- ize some European corporate stories and, to some extent, the civil society is taking note of the issues at stake. Publishing a social report may be considered as a way to show organizational ethical commitment. The present paper tries to find an empirical validation to support the hypothesis that the phenome- non of social reporting has changed and is growing in importance. The paper analyses Italian social reporting models, approaches and objectives, in order to reach a clearer view of the general framework and ongoing trends. * Correspondence to: Davide Secchi, Ph.D., Lecturer in Management, Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Via Ravasi, 2 – 21100 Varese, Italy. E-mail: dsecchi@eco.unipv.it Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. (in press) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/csr.096