CSR, shared territorial governance and social innovation. Some exemplary Italian paths

This paper explores the development of territorial social responsibility, a form of governance cultivated through the diffusion of corporate social responsibility strategies which are promoted by networks of local actors—public and private, for—and non-profit—who come from the same territory and whose policies are oriented towards sustainable development. Departing from the different models that explain diffusion of CSR principles, tools and practices—taking into consideration the different patterns of private and public actions in the European context—the paper addresses the attention on the specificity of the Italian model for spreading CSR, based on a multiplicity of projects tied at a local level. The work integrates the results of an intensive literature review with longitudinal empirical research. Within a constructivist paradigm, a deductive-inductive research approach has been followed. First, drawing from the literature review, a conceptual framework has been proposed; then it has been applied to the investigated phenomenon. Secondly, the analysis of the Rimini’s (Emilia Romagna Region) experience (“PercoRSI” project)—a pathway promoted by a plurality of public and private actors, who find that social cohesion and relationships are the drivers in the construction of shared territorial governance— allows us to evaluate that policies for promoting CSR and sustainability at a meso-level are not effective when they are not coherently fostered by regional authorities together with local private actors. Consequently, the model of shared territorial governance represents an innovation in support of public policies that can be replicated in other regions relying on specific contextual factors.