Does management control for sustainable development support TSEs funding? Some insights from the Italian context

Abstract

Literature has called to investigate sustainability management control and reporting in third sector entities (TSEs), and how these latter can provide support to attract funds to these organizations for survival and growth. To address these gaps, a questionnaire survey has been administered to a sample of 4000 TSEs to investigate to what extent they are using planning and control systems to measure and report sustainable development (SD) information to attract funds, in front of major donors’ sensitivity around SD. As from the results, the adoption of sustainability initiatives in TSEs is weakly impacted by the donors’ sensitivity around SD; nevertheless, in TSEs adopting SD initiatives, the increase in the use of integrated management accounting, combining both financial and sustainability information is highly correlated to SD sensitivity of donors. The paper adds to the literature of sustainability reporting of TSEs and contribute to practice, underlying the main criticalities TSEs in using planning and control systems to support funding activities, especially in the light of SD sensitive donors.