Operationalising sustainable corporate governance: A cluster analysis of environmental sustainability practices in Italian service-sector SMEs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7433/s130.2026.11Keywords:
Sustainable Corporate Governance, Environmental Sustainability, environmental certification, Italian SMEs, sustainable Corporate Social ResponsibilityAbstract
Frame of the research: Sustainable Corporate Governance (SCG) increasingly calls for understanding how sustainability is operationalised through everyday organisational practices, particularly in SMEs where governance is often enacted through operational routines rather than formal structures. However, evidence on how environmental practices are configured across service-sector SMEs remains limited.
Purpose of the paper: The paper investigates how environmental sustainability is enacted within SMEs through the multidimensional adoption of environmental practices, identifying distinct behavioural profiles associated with different levels of environmental maturity. The study develops a governance-sensitive interpretative framework to explore how such profiles may be associated with different organisational conditions and potential governance orientations.
Methodology: Using a dataset of Italian service-sector SMEs engaged in the Imprendigreen program (2022-2024), we aggregate 172 environmental practices into nine domains and perform a year-specific cluster analysis. This approach identifies recurring patterns of environmental practice adoption and compares their distribution across yearly samples.
Findings: Four clusters consistently emerge, reflecting heterogeneous levels of environmental maturity and different configurations of practices. While some companies display broad and structured adoption, others focus on basic or compliance-oriented actions. Cross-year comparisons suggest variations in the distribution of profiles across samples, alongside persistent heterogeneity within the certified population.
Research limits: The study draws on Italian SMEs adopting a voluntary certification scheme, which may introduce self-selection bias and limits the generalisability of the findings. Moreover, the dataset does not include social or formal governance variables and is cross-sectional in structure. This prevents causal inference regarding governance-practice relationships. Additionally, the analysis relies on declared practice adoption rather than verified implementation.
Practical implications: While remaining exploratory in nature, the study proposes governance-sensitive recommendations tailored to different maturity profiles, supporting decision-makers and sectoral associations in designing targeted interventions for capacity-building and sustainability progression.
Originality of the paper: The paper contributes to SCG research by providing granular empirical evidence on how environmental practices are configured among service-sector SMEs and by linking behavioural differentiation to governance-oriented lines of inquiry within a certification context.
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