Impact of the B Corp certification on companies’ externalities: Application in the food and beverage industry

Details

Supervisors

Swaen, Valérie

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

The environmental and social challenges of the 21st century are numerous and solutions must be found. Companies are increasingly aware that they have a role to play, given that they are partly responsible for the ecological and social disasters we are experiencing today. In this context, committed and concerned companies have decided to take actions and some of them have decided to become B Corp certified. The certification is granted to firms meeting high environmental and social standards. As the number of companies who want to demonstrate their commitment to the world is increasing, the B Corp movement is growing and gaining in importance. However, the impact that B Corp has on the reduction of companies’ externalities is still unclear and needs to be defined. To understand the impact of this movement on firms’ externalities better, interviews have been conducted with fourteen B Corp companies. Thanks to that, first-hand data has been collected and analysed. The focus of this empirical study was put on the food and beverage industry. This sector is well represented in the B Corp movement as one certified firm out of nine is active in this industry. Moreover, this sector faces many environmental and social challenges and understanding how the B Corp movement could help is interesting, From this empirical research, some conclusions have been drawn. First, it seems that the impact of B Corp on the reduction of firms’ externalities is limited. The impact varies largely between businesses and most of the companies were already tackling those challenges before getting certified. Indeed, most of the firms interviewed were already highly committed and B Corp was seen as a third-party insurance. Even if B Corp seems to be obtained mostly by dedicated companies, it still challenges and pushes them to go further by taking new initiatives. Nonetheless, to unlock the full potential of the B Corp certification, more companies should join the movement and more joint action plans should be developed between B Corps. Hence, B Corp has a lot of potential, but further developments seem needed to convince more companies to join this “force for good”.