Gender differences in the personal values of for-benefit entrepre-neurs. An investigation of Italian Benefit Corporations

Italy is the first country to have introduced the Benefit Corporation legislation outside the USA with the Law 208/2015 that governs the coexistence between profit and non-profit, creating hybrid organizations. Italian Benefit Corporations are for-profit private companies that pursue general and/or specific public benefits according to a statute provision, in addition to an economic goal. Therefore, they have to balance shareholder interests with stakeholder interests. Prior research has investigated personal, spiritual or business motivations that may push for-profit companies to become Benefit Corporations. However, little is known about the personal values behind these motivations and related gender differences among for-benefit entrepreneurs. We argue that deepened knowledge about the personal values of for-benefit entrepreneurs and gender differences is crucial to understand Benefit Corporations better, including their way of operate and their capacity to satisfy stakeholders’ interests, thus spreading a new way of doing business. In this light, our research aims to examine gender differences in Italian for-benefit entrepreneurs’ personal values to analyse if and how male and female for-benefit entrepreneurs differ from each other. To this end, the study has adopted an explorative approach. A sample of 185 Italian Benefit Corporations was selected by consulting the Benefit Corporations list on the websites www.societabenefit.net and www.nativalab.com and choosing only those with an email address. Then, a questionnaire was administrated by email to the firm’s entrepreneur to investigate three main areas: the respondents’ characteristics, firm’s general information and entrepreneur’s personal values measured by adopting the Portrait Values Questionnaire developed by Schwartz et al. (J Pers Soc Psychol 2012;103(4): 663–688). After the data collection, a descriptive statistics analysis and a Student’s t-test were performed. Results have revealed that, when it comes to running a business with the legal form of Benefit Corporations or a B-Corp certification, gender does not matter.