Sustainability implementation and reporting in SMEs: overcoming barriers and leveraging opportunities. Evidence from an extensive industrial survey in Ticino

Sustainability implementation and Sustainability Reporting can be considered as mature while looking to the activities of big multinational companies, however the situation is much more heterogenous and less consolidated while looking at SMEs. This paper investigates how to overcome the barriers usually faced by SMEs as well as how sustainability implementation and Sustainability Reporting can influence the sources of Competitive Advantage (CA) and become pillars of a Sustainability-Oriented Innovation (SOI) approach. Thanks to an online survey conducted with more than 500 SMEs, the influence of size and type of industrial sectors were investigated as well as the relationships among the various sources of CA linked to sustainability. The obtained results allow to determine the priorities to be followed for supporting SMEs in their sustainability journey. Moreover, they address how to implement specific methods and tools satisfying the needs of SMEs as well as taking into account their limited amount of resources and competences.