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ABSTRACT
The contemporary business environment is strongly influenced by sustainability demands that come from customers, employees, regulators, and communities. To prove themselves and to the environment the benefit impact of their operations and to improve their impact many companies around the globe use the Benefit Impact Assessment tool. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the Benefit Impact Assessment scores of the Certified B Corporations in the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Croatia, and the activities which enabled their achievements. The research is based on the qualitative analysis of theme-relevant publicly available secondary data. The results have shown that B Corp movement is at an early stage in Slovenia and Croatia, with 4 companies leading the way. The current BIA scores of the analyzed Slovenian and a Croatian company show that they put much weight to the investments in workers and community, while the Croatian Certified B Corp stands out in the environment area with its business model oriented towards resource conservation and toxin reduction. Although limited by the secondary data on which the research was based, the research results offer valuable insights for Chief Sustainability Officers and team members across organizations who think about the most appropriate way to measure, communicate and improve their impact on the society.
Keywords: Benefit Impact Assessment, Certified B Corporations, Croatia, Slovenia, social responsibility
1. INTRODUCTION
The contemporary business environment is strongly influenced by sustainability demands that come from customers, employees, regulators, and communities. Hence, more companies are trying to differentiate themselves from the growing greenwashing practice and considering different paths to assess and improve their impact. Among them there is a growing community of Certified B Corporations (currently 9.402 companies in 105 countries) using Benefit Impact Assessment, a free publicly available online tool for measuring and improving impact developed by a non-profit organization, B Lab (B Lab, 2024a). The purpose of the paper is to analyze the B Impact Assessment scores of the companies currently certified as B Corporations in the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Croatia, and the activities which enabled their achievements. Our research questions are formulated as follows: in which industries and countries are operating Certified B Corporations in Slovenia and Croatia, what is their size (number of employees),...