Authentic CSR and Leadership: Towards a Virtues-Based Model of Stakeholder Dialogue and Engagement: The Loccioni Group Experience

The paper addressed the theme of authentic CSR based on a virtues and a charismatic approach. Several studies—which are part of the theoretical framework of CSR and are placed within ethical theories—underline how entrepreneurial behaviors and values lie at the base of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-oriented strategies and actions. The business ethics literature emphasises the values dimension of entrepreneurial and managerial activity and has introduced concepts such as management integrity, authenticity and virtues, which are becoming widespread in the corporate context. Departing from these premises, the works focuses on entrepreneurial and managerial leadership and on its attributes and role in developing an authentic CSR oriented strategy. The work addresses the following questions: Can a business become a laboratory capable of orienting and educating stakeholders’ “minds and hearts”? How does leadership affect the dissemination of a CSR authentic orientation at all levels of the organization? On which values and virtues is an authentic leadership based? And how can virtues be used to trigger stakeholder engagement, with particular reference to internal stakeholders, like employees? These questions are the thread from which the study has been developed, focusing on the factors affecting leadership that put social responsibility as the foundation of behaviors, actions and strategies to be disseminated and shared inside and outside the company. First, the work offers an analysis of the leadership theoretical framework paying specific attention to values and virtues-based models of leadership. Secondly, the paper presents the first results of an empirical analysis, centered on an exemplary case study relative to a company—the Loccioni Group—which has for years built the CSR-orientation into its mission and governance model and, recently, has been implementing a project aimed to assess virtues among its stakeholders, departing initially from its employees. The results of the study have both scientific and managerial implications and they underline the need for developing a methodology that allows further empirical research on the relationship between ethical values, humanistic education, family and social structures and the development of an authentic CSR-oriented model of entrepreneurial leadership.