Sustainability Reporting and Corporate Identity: Action Research Evidence in an Italian Retailing Cooperative

Cooperatives are facing the challenge to be competitive in the market, without losing their traditional values of mutuality and democracy. To do that, they need to re‐construct open and participative dialogue with their employees and members based on more democratic forms of communication and engagement. From this point of view, the measurement and communication of sustainability aspects may allow a dialogue to be mobilized with shareholders and stakeholders without losing the attention on competitive factors. Based on these premises, the article analyses the experience of a 5‐year action research project (from 2006 to mid‐2011), carried out within Unicoop Tirreno, an Italian consumers' cooperative, and aimed to implement different tools for sustainability accounting and to embrace a more open dialogue with stakeholders, in particular with employees and members. In this process of change, the tools implemented for sustainability accounting played a key role in supporting the cooperative to reinterpret its own values and in stimulating a new and participative management approach. The results indicate a virtuous circle between the management and measurement of cooperative principles and the management and measurement of sustainability issues.


Introduction
Over the years, an increasing number of organisations have begun to implement sustainability accounting, in particular carrying out sustainability reporting activities (Kolk 2003, KPMG 2011. The benefits gained from the implementation and use of sustainability accounting span from improvement of risk management (Unerman 2006, Bebbington et al. 2008, a more informed decision making (Adams & Frost 2008, Burritt 2012, and the capacity to improve environmental and social performance evaluation (Epstein et al., forthcoming). On the accountability dimension, the motivations leading an organisation to undertake a sustainability report can be several (Adams & Zutshi 2004). They range from acquiring or maintaining the approval, for strategic or economic reasons, of the most powerful stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and creditors (Deegan 2002, Islam & Deegan 2010) to a desire to be responsible and accountable to all those that a company's activities might impact on (Salani 2004). Other reasons are related to the necessity to respond to a variety of institutional pressures (Bebbington et al. 2009) and the importance of protecting and enhancing the value, and potential income-generation, deriving from organisational reputation (Spence 2009).
So far, qualitative studies have analysed different aspects associated with sustainability reporting and sustainability accounting; however, such analyses have been performed without any specific focus on cooperative organisation. For example,  conducted 9 case studies in Spanish organisations including a total of 15 semistructured interviews to address the relationship between environmental accounting and organisational change. They found that organisations with access to a large amount of environmental information used their reporting in order to control the national environmental agenda and to legitimise the company in the eyes of society, thus concluding that sustainability reporting had little impact on changes to internal company systems.
Through a series of interviews, Adams (2002) examined the impact of internal contextual factors that might influence decision making about reporting in seven large multinational companies located in the UK and Germany and operating in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. The study explored, among others, the departments involved in decision making; the nature and extent of stakeholder involvement in the reporting process; and the motivations underlying the publication of the sustainability report. The results showed that the process of reporting and decision making appears to depend on country of origin, corporate culture and company size. In turn, these variables influence the degree of formality vs. informality of the reporting process, the departments involved in the process and the extent of stakeholders' engagement. Furthermore, it emerged that the main motivation behind sustainability reporting was to enhance corporate image and credibility towards external stakeholders and to respond to public pressure.
O'Dwyer (2005) undertook a critical examination of the evolution of the social accounting process in a specific Irish overseas aid agency. This case study demonstrated the contradictions, tensions and obstacles that affect social accounting, when it is used as a mechanism to drive organisational change and improve stakeholder relationships. The findings revealed a systematic process adopted by the organisational board to silence stakeholders, which completely contradicts the agenda of those promoting social accounting and reporting in the organisation. The nature of the stakeholder identification and consultation process was fundamentally flawed and deliberately oriented to exclude key stakeholders' voices and to avoid stakeholders' concerns and critical observations. In this way, the organisation was characterised by the total absence of stakeholder engagement in internal decisionmaking processes.
In their action research, Adams & McNicholas's (2007) purpose was to examine the obstacles faced by a state-owned company in developing and integrating sustainability reporting into their annual report. They found that some of the main obstacles were a lack of knowledge among the management team as to what constitutes best practice in terms of sustainability reporting; a lack of understanding about how sustainability goals and reporting practices could be integrated into the organisation-wide strategic planning process; and a lack of experience in engaging stakeholders in the reporting process and in the identification of key performance indicators. They concluded that in spite of the obstacles related to it, sustainability reporting can be considered as a useful tool to introduce and reinforce sustainability principles into company's planning and decision making, thus leading to improved awareness on sustainability issues. Bebbington et al. (2009) interviewed a selected group of companies in order to document why they initiated sustainable development reporting and to explore these explanations using an institutional theoretical framework. They found that the choice to engage in reporting does not appear to be rational. Instead, reporting is initiated because it has come to be an accepted part of a differentiation strategy and because it offers positive contributions to business challenges and to company value. They concluded that a number of different normative and cognitive institutions interacted to shape the process of sustainability reporting influencing managers' decisions about the development of the report.
Despite the studies carried out, most of which focused on the accountability dimension of sustainability accounting (Gray 2001, the literature analysis evidences both a limited use of action research as a method to investigate sustainability accounting [the notable exceptions are the works by Adams & McNicholas (2007) and Mitchell et al. (2012)] and also the absence of longitudinal analysis on the topic. In addition, Burritt (2012) has recently argued that the interplay between accountability and internal dimension of sustainability measurement has not yet been well investigated. In this regard, Gray (2002), Parker (2005) and  also had asserted the need for more in-depth understanding of how and why sustainability accounting evolves within organisations. Similarly, Adams & Larrinaga (2007) also had argued that there is the need for further field studies which investigate the integration of social and environmental issues into decision making , Searcy 2012.
The present study fits into this academic context, reporting and setting forth a longitudinal action research project carried out from 2006 to 2011 within an Italian large consumer cooperative, Unicoop Tirreno, and aimed to rediscover cooperative core values and improve the stakeholder engagement through the implementation of some tools associated with sustainability accounting. Specifically, the research analyses the implementation of different sustainability managerial and accounting tools that have been used to rediscover and strengthen Unicoop's core values, principles and identity. The aims were also to introduce sustainability matter analysis into decision making and to stimulate a more open and transparent stakeholder dialogue. The actions undertaken during the project are analysed and discussed from operative and strategic points of view. The research contributes to the literature on the role that sustainability accounting may play in a cooperative organisation which has been neglected in previous research due to the attention on state-owned organisations and shareholderowned companies (Adams & McNicholas 2007). Empirically, the study demonstrates a feasible path for the implementation, development and improvement of sustainability accounting and accountability within a cooperative organisation, highlighting also problems and contradictions that characterised this process.
The paper is structured as follows: the next section describes the characteristics of a cooperative enterprise and the profile of Unicoop Tirreno. The third section outlines the methodology used during the project. The subsequent section describes the devel-opment of the project and the findings, detailing discussions, conclusions and inputs for future research.

Characteristics of cooperative societies and the profile of Unicoop Tirreno
The International Co-operative Alliance defined a cooperative as 'an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democraticallycontrolled enterprise' (MacPherson 1995). Cooperatives are enterprises in which all the members can participate in the processes of decision making and governance (Harrison & Freeman 2004, Zamagni & Zamagni 2008 and are fundamentally based on the idea of organisational democracy (Matten & Crane 2005). They are characterised by the following principles (Zamagni & Felice 2006): (1) voluntary and open membership; (2) democratic member control; (3) member economic participation; (4) autonomy and independence; (5) education, training and information; (6) cooperation among cooperatives; (7) concern for community. In addition, as democratic organisations are managed by their members, they are more accountable to their stakeholders than corporations (Salani 2004). In the tradition of their founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others (Zamagni & Zamagni 2008).
Cooperatives have a specific governance and a specific business model (Zamagni et al. 2004, Mazzoli 2005, as well as a long socio-economic tradition which combines global orientation and local attention, and which merge economic orientation with the principle of mutuality (Zamagni et al. 2004, Mazzoli 2005, Poma 2006). In the economic literature, a cooperative organisation is identified as a valid alternative to profit-oriented firms, due to its ability to overcome certain limits, such as the exclusive orientation to economic and financial results and the maximisation of shareholders' profits (Parnell 1997, Zamagni 2005.
Unicoop Tirreno is a large consumer cooperative organisation. As such, its primary aim is to purchase goods directly from the wholesalers or producers and supply the goods to members at reasonable prices. Its economic motive is not to earn profits, but to provide services to its members, that is, the owners of the cooperative (shareholders). Moreover, the members are called by the statute to participate in the company's governance. Unicoop Tirreno was established in 1945 in Piombino (Tuscany, Italy) by 30 members and was originally called La Proletaria (in English 'The Working Class') as its mission was to help the working class from economic and social points of view. Its original name reflected the primary objective of the self-help organisation: mutuality and economic protection of its members, with the aim of improving living standards and quality of life (Tognarini 1997(Tognarini , 2005.
Unicoop Tirreno has today an annual revenue of around €1.3 billion, 111 stores, roughly 900,000 members and more than 6,000 employees. Started mainly as a territorial cooperative, today Unicoop Tirreno is established in four Italian Regions (Tuscany, Lazio, Campania and Umbria) and represents one of the most important national actors in the Italian retail market (Nesti 2005, Tognarini 2005. From the 1980s onwards, Unicoop Tirreno experienced an intense growth regarding both the type of products offered and the number of clients and suppliers, and enlarged its range of action beyond the territories and regions of traditional settlement. In the 1990s, this process became more and more intense, with a related increase of membership. During this period, the cooperative increased its revenue and its profit, but it started to drift away from its members and progressively became incapable of responding to their needs in a satisfactory manner.
Despite its long tradition and its rooted principles, the growth in size and commercial activities caused a progressive detachment from the mutuality logic. Involvement of members in company's governance, their sharing of cooperative values, their participation in the cooperative's social activities drastically decreased, and members began to shop at Unicoop Tirreno only for its commercial offers. The active participation of employees and members in the decision-making process, and more in general within the democratic life of the company, has tended to dwindle over time. Moreover, the attention to territories and members focused more and more on commercial issues, moving far from the cooperative inspiring principles. This process, called demutualisation, has been widely studied in the literature, since it is today common to many cooperative organisations (Ferrucci 2006, Zamagni & Felice 2006, Pestoff 2012.
In accordance with Griffiths (2004: 17) demutualisation 'refers to the decreased use of mutual organisations to provide services and produce goods and the conversion from mutual to investor ownership. The beginning of demutualisation of a cooperative is when the cooperative has lost its cooperative identity and what distinguishes it from investorowned companies.' Demutualisation can be split into two different phases: first, one in which cooperatives lose their values, and a second one characterised by the formal conversion into investor-oriented enterprises. Most probably, in the retailing sector, a relevant contribution to this process has been the increase in market competition, with new, large-scale international retail groups and the tendency to create an elite within the organisation to assume a growing and commanding role that results in the effective capture of the enterprises, making it difficult for cooperatives to keep traditional values and identity alive (Parnell 1997, Salani 2005.
In Unicoop Tirreno, the cooperative principles of democracy, mutuality and safeguard of future generations were no longer effectively transmitted through the daily activity of the organisation, and were not perceived by members and employees. Over time, their participation in the cooperative's governance has indeed been compromised. With these premises, the top management of Unicoop Tirreno, and in particular the President, decided in 2006 to set up a project in order to strengthen the relationship with the cooperative's shareholders -i.e. membersand a privileged category of stakeholders -i.e. employees -trying to increase their level of engagement in organisational activities, by promoting communication, dialogue and active participation within organisation decision-making processes.
The main target was to redefine and strengthen the traditional cooperative's values, and identify a more participative management model of the cooperative (i.e. the turnaround of the demutualisation process). Specifically, the target was to link internal decision making, participative processes with stakeholders and accountability activity with the cooperative's values in order to link and merge cooperative principles, members' and employees' needs, and market performance. The desired outcome was to achieve and maintain success on the competitive market and strengthen the Unicoop's identity. In order to reach the target, the decision made by Unicoop Tirreno's top management was the engagement of a university research group, expert in the field of management, whose involvement would support the cooperative in defining the proposal for a specific research project. Nevertheless, even if in this framework of analysis the cooperative's needs were clear, the outline of a specific research question was not yet possible to define, such as the aspects related to research plan methods and instruments to use. As a first step, the establishment of a methodology of analysis was needed, able to guarantee both scientific rigor and an accurate interpretation of evolutionary dynamics of the organisation (both internal and external ones). As described in the following section, the choice made regarding the methodology fell on the action research approach.

Research method
Action research is a participatory method through which the researchers are directly involved in the creation and implementation of the process of change inside an organisation, together with its practitioners (Eden & Huxham 1996, Burns 2007, Chevalier & Buckles 2013. The concept of action research originated primarily in the work of Kurt Lewin in the mid-1940s (Lewin 1947, Coghlan & Brannick 2007, and aims both to take action and to create knowledge or theory about a given context. Action research is a participative process. Actors in the studied organisation participate actively in the investigation analysis, working with the research team so that the issue(s) may be solved or the system improved (Coghlan & Brannick 2007). The outcome of combining 'action' with 'research' is to create new knowledge overcoming important social and organisational issues together (Brydon-Miller et al. 2003, Baard 2010. Knowledge is produced by an interaction between the expertise of the research team and the insights and values of the organisation actors. Action research is both a sequence of events and an approach to problem solving. According to Eden & Huxham (1996) and Greenwood & Levin (2007), action research is based on five specific phases that define it and distinguish it from case study research, interviews, or consulting activity. These phases are: • Diagnosing: identification of the problematic situation. It involves interpretation of a complex organisational problem, not through reduction and simplification, but rather in a holistic manner. A first theoretical framework will stem from this step. • Action planning: specification of the actions to adopt in order to solve or relieve the problematic situation. The previously established theoretical framework plays an important role in the identification of the actions to take. • Action taking: implementation of the devised actions, causing change to occur and, in principle, leading to an improved situation. • Evaluating: assessment of the outcomes of the actions taken, after the completion of the previous step. This involves a critical analysis of the results in light of the theoretical framework and of the practical effects that were achieved. • Specifying learning: identification and description of findings (lessons learned), based on the information resulting from the previous step, which is the new knowledge.
The knowledge emerging from the fifth phase is intended to be meaningful to others, and can consist also in new tools, techniques and models of analysis (Eden & Huxham 1996). Because of its interventionist character, action research may be less relevant in demonstrating links between data and outcomes, but it is one of the best ways to demonstrate the changes within an organisation (Chevalier & Buckles 2013). On these premises, in order to tackle the demutualisation process suffered by Unicoop Tirreno, the research group decided to engage an action research path with a complete involvement within activities of the cooperative and a close connection with processes implemented by top management. By this method, the aim was to trace the changes gained within the organisation, in a scientific and objective way, working and interacting continuously with the actors of the organisation, and gaining with them an improvement of knowledge. The reason behind this was to avoid any self-referential track, solving the issues detected and at the same time creating new knowledge available for both other cooperatives (external mutuality logic) and academics (Greenwood & Levin 2007).
The action research project described was carried out from 2006 to mid-2011. According to Adams & Larrinaga (2007), the practice to engage with an organisation has the potential to improve its sustainability accounting and accountability performance. They argued that the practice of engagement is useful to investigate and understand for which aims an organisation is using sustainability accounting. On the same way of thinking, Adams & Whelan (2009) argued that action research can be a useful research method to understand how corporate stakeholders affect changes about sustainability reporting. Action research gives the opportunity to discover how organisations define sustainability, how they manage it, why they engage in activities related to sustainability, and how they assess as well as communicate this engagement. To this end, pursuing research where researchers can be actually engaged in the sustainability accounting, and thus facilitate organisational change, has been recognised as an important way to advance knowledge on the topic (Gray 2002, Parker 2005, Owen 2008).
During the project, the researchers participated in numerous meetings and met the president, the head of each directorate, middle managers, and operational staff. In addition, they had the opportunity to use internal and archival documents of the cooperative. The group of researchers was composed of a scientific coordinator, an expert on sustainability management, and three researchers, specialising in sustainability, organisation and human resource management, and accounting. The following sections will define the path that characterised these 5 years of research inside Unicoop Tirreno, through the description and analysis of the key aspects that emerged.

Observation and findings
With the aim of systemising and organising the results that emerged from 5 years of research, the activity performed is described at three different levels of analysis. These levels, not strictly sequential, express the main activities carried out and show the changes that were stimulated within the project. They are useful to highlight the hot spots in the problem-solving process within the cooperative as the basis to stress the conclusions and the academic knowledge contribution. In particular, the three levels detected are as follows: • the inquiry level: at this level, on the basis of an initial selection process of the most useful managerial tools to implement, internal and external dynamics of the cooperative were studied, through direct interactions with top management, middle management and operational staff, and through an analysis of specific internal documents; • the tools development level: at this level, the tools to measure and analyse sustainability issues were developed, in order to build and improve the measurement and accountability of sustainability performance; • the governance level: at this third level, the ideas and information elaborated and acquired within the previous two phases were transformed into new sustainability policies and activities that generated organisational and managerial changes.

Level 1 -inquiry level
The first phase that characterised the research process was the analysis of the issues related to the demutualisation process, reported by the top management (in particular by the president), and the identification of a new managerial approach aimed at problem solving. As mentioned above, the issue of Unicoop Tirreno was to renew and implement its cooperative identity based on the mutualistic principle and transfer its system of values to the two main interlocutors: employees and members-shareholders. This approach should have been consistent with the company's size (which has over time significantly increased), focusing on the adoption of more sophisticated management tools, which could have stimulated in a renewed way the participation of shareholders and employees to the governance and the operational management of the firm, in order to build a trust-based relationship with them (Swift 2001).
In 2003, Unicoop Tirreno had internally established a new function, which was a new presidency staff member, that would specifically address issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The CSR officer nominated was assigned the task of guiding those activities in consideration of the close analogy between the topics of sustainability at the basis of CSR policies and the value system of the cooperative (Salani 2004). This latter is decreed in the Charter of Values, which contains principles that refer to economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability. The Charter of Values (2006: 72-73) bears the values of mutual aid, responsibility of everyone, labour, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. The cooperative's members are inspired by the ethical values of honesty, transparency, respect for commitments, social responsibility and attention to others, and within the cooperative they are called to democratic participation and governance. Moreover, the Charter of Values stresses that the cooperative works for the advantage of consumers and local communities acting in moral and material interests of consumers, respecting the environment, using the resources appropriately, recognising the priority of health and solidarity among people. Finally, the Charter of Values uses a multi-stakeholder approach in order to define specific objectives of 'the corporate social responsibility' and their relationships with different subjects: members, consumers, employees, suppliers, environment, school and culture, public institutions and cooperatives.
Starting from these premises, the issue was to identify which was the most efficient managerial tool able to redefine the cooperative's identity profile, according to this multi-stakeholder perspective. According to Bratman (1992), three different conditions should be met in order to re-assert and strengthen the identity of a cooperative society: • mutual responsiveness, for which members consider other members in the decision process; • commitment to the joint activity among members (even if with different purposes); • commitment to mutual support, with a mutual assistance among members in order to achieve common goals. Viola (2004) identified two factors needed to fulfil the above conditions: 'increasing communication' and 'promoting commitment to internal equity'. The 'communication' should be intended not as mere information, but rather as a real form of participation between cooperative, its members and other stakeholders, such as employees, local communities and commercial partners. The 'commitment to internal equity' concerns the guarantee to ban all forms of exploitation and subjugation (Viola 2004). The application of this principle represents a fundamental engagement of a cooperative towards its members and employees. On the one hand, members should be stimulated and encouraged to participate actively in internal governance and decision-making processes. On the other hand, when dealing with employees, the management should be able to transmit the importance to reconcile economic targets and cooperative principles in order to affirm and maintain the distinctive character of the cooperatives compared with the profit-oriented companies (see also Zamagni et al. 2004, Zamagni 2005, Ferrucci 2006).
At the beginning of the research, the abovementioned literature review was used to relect on Unicoop's framework and permitted the identification of how and where to operate to strengthen the participation of employees (Collier & Esteban 2007) and members, and to reinforce the cooperative's identity. In line with the idea that accountability to its members is a distinctive factor for a cooperative (Salani 2004), and according to Viola (2004) the necessity to increase communication and participation between the cooperative and its members and stakeholders, the social report was considered the initial most suitable tool to use in the research process 1 (Morsing & Schultz 2006). A social report has the capacity to outline the performances of the organisation beyond those strictly economic, to communicate with transparent values and identity of an organisation, and to facilitate stakeholder engagement processes (Salani 2004, Joseph 2012. In fact, since 2001, Unicoop Tirreno had been drafting a social report that was used as a mere informative tool to provide non-financial information to stakeholders. The new objective was to rethink the nature and the structure of the social report in order to have a more reliable and transparent tool capable of acquiring the attention of the cooperative's members and, at the same time, to stimulate the attention and participation of the stakeholders (Salani 2004, Morsing & Schultz 2006. From the operational point of view, all activities related to Social Report drafting have witnessed a continuous interaction between researchers and Unicoop Tirreno. The researchers were fully involved in the cooperative's activities and provided both the methodological and operative support needed for analysing the cooperative's characteristics, by collecting and analysing information, drafting the report and, finally, providing feedback to management. The process, each year, was broken down into two macro-phases. The first step focused on carrying out interviews with the cooperative's staff, and the second focused on the construction of the report. The whole process was performed in close cooperation with the CSR manager. The first macrophase involved an initial start-up meeting with the cooperative's president. The aim of this meeting was to share the details of the methodological approach to be implemented in the following steps, and to receive information on focal points of the cooperative's strategy of social responsibility. Indications obtained from the meeting with the president were considered the basis for the following meetings with the other top managers (the directors). These interviews were totally open, with no predefined protocol. They were aimed at identifying a first picture of the cooperative, with the most relevant issues to be analysed with the middle management and operational staff.
Furthermore, the meetings with the middle managers and their collaborators were oriented to define and analyse in detail the CSR targets, the actions implemented, the results obtained and their effects on the cooperative's stakeholders. During these meetings, the schedules for data collection aiming at the construction of sustainability performance indicators were defined. At this level, meetings were managed using semi-structured interviews with the support of a specific tool for the survey of data and indicators, called the 'chart of sustainability accounts'. During the 5 years of activity, a progressive intensification of horizontal and inter-functional relationships among middle managers and operational staff was clear, with an increase in collaborations among staff belonging to different directorates.
In the beginning, a tendency to operate somewhat independently emerged, with little (if any) awareness of the opportunities that could arise from sharing certain information with other directorates. Gradually, inter-functional connections were created, allowing the same issues to be dealt with in different perspectives, at the same time starting to interact with the CSR manager and the researchers in order to initiate and promote new internal collaborations. This improvement in the provision of information and in their strategic functionality was possible thanks to a growing confidence that the staff acquired with respect to the issues, as well as due to an improvement in the relations between staff members and researchers.
The second macro-phase encompassed the elaboration of the CSR performance indicators and the sustainability report drafting. The first draft version of the report was shared exclusively with the president and the top managers. The meeting with the president and top managers aimed to supply a first analysis and interpretation of the results achieved, checking their coherence with the outlined strategy. Afterwards, the process envisaged drafting and publishing two different documents: the sustainability report and the synthesis report. The sustainability report was the published official document presented to the annual assemblies of members and put online on the cooperative's web site, in order for it to be available to all stakeholders. The synthesis report, confidential for the top management, aimed at describing the strong and weak points that transpired from the analysis of coherence between corporate strategies and the results obtained (and measured by sustainability indicators), including some advice useful to fill the gaps.
It is important to observe that starting from 2006 to mid-2011, the number of cooperative employees involved in meetings and gathering information increased considerably. The employees, from middle level and high management levels, rose from 16 to 31, demonstrating the perceived growing importance of sustainability issues (Table 1). An increasing involvement of the top management members was also registered over the same 5-year period. Indeed, in 2006, only the president and one director had participated in outlining the report. Starting from 2010, the entire top management team (six directors and the president) was involved in the process, demonstrating a strong commitment to the project and an increasing relevance of sustainability in the internal decision-making process. In the process of increasing involvement of different functions, the first to be involved were components of the directorates closer to the CSR issues: the presidency, expression of members-shareholders, and the directorate of social affairs, responsible for the promotion of noncommercial initiatives addressed to the members at local level. Afterwards, other directorates were engaged, from the human resources directorate to the technical directorate, then the commercial and logistic departments, and eventually, in 2010, the finance directorate.
Over the years, each directorate was stimulated to find some sustainability core themes, allowing a systematisation of the issues ( Table 2). The spotting of the core themes was carried out through a direct involvement of the middle management and operational staff, and through an assignment of direct responsibilities on the implementation and achievement of targets related to the themes identified. The overall results of the several initiatives and activities carried out were a better alignment of information belonging to different directorates, an improvement in data collection and analysis, and finally, a map of the interaction between mutuality activities and social and environmental issues.     In terms of barriers encountered in the process, at the beginning one of the most critical obstacles was the lack of familiarity among staff in measuring performance other than financial and economic. This has been overcome thanks to the knowledge of the research team which helped staff to become more confident with sustainability issues, and with the opportunities and problems linked to their measurement. Moreover, the employees realised that a structured search of certain information and data enabled them to improve some ordinary activities, with a positive effect on the entire management of the cooperative. For instance, employees of the human resources directorate showed the usefulness of the collection of information on training activities provided to employees, which -until then -was run separately among each directorate. Furthermore, the employees of the technical directorate started a process of continuous monitoring of the consumption of natural resources that brought them, a little later, to plan energy audits at all stores. These and other feedback received over the years have shown a process of progressive learning that is not limited to the narrow sphere of activities relating to accountability, but that becomes key to the interest of the overall internal management activities. Another aspect that emerged during the meetings with middle managers was the lack of coordination among different directorates in the development of specific projects. Sometimes, the same project was indeed promoted simultaneously by different functions with no mutual knowledge. In some cases (but not always), the researchers were called to play the role of connectors, facilitating the coordination among the activities and promoting an increased efficiency in the management of such initiatives.

Level 2 -tool development level
The second level describes the process of development of the sustainability accounting system. In this process, middle management and operational staff worked to guarantee a reliable measurement of sustainability performance.
The common tool for gathering the necessary sustainability information (the 'chart of sustainability accounts') was substantially improved, bringing out a series of critical issues. The main example was about environmental indicators. In 2006, the environmental matrix (energy and water consumption, waste management, etc.) reported only 'estimated data'. In 2010, approximately 80% of the data was monitored and calculated and not estimated, and other management tools, such as energy audits, were implemented to check anomalies, with positive impacts both on environmental performance and economic savings.
The topics addressed tended to concentrate progressively on those issues more traditionally linked to the contribution provided by the cooperative to sustainable development, with a parallel process oriented towards rationalising the number and the type of indicators adopted. As shown in Table 1, an increasing number of cooperative staff were involved in the project, with a concurrent progressive rationalisation and decrease of both the subjects investigated and of the total number of performance indicators adopted. Progressively, each indicator and subject was inserted into one of the three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental), and from 2008, the report changed its structure, moving from a social report towards a sustainability report (Table 3).
This change was proposed by the research team and was shared with Unicoop's top management and the president. To this end, the accountability reference system was changed, from Italian guidelines for social reporting 2 to Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. This implied a move from a reporting structure apt primarily to measure the effects of actions carried out on the stakeholders, to a reporting structure oriented to measure the overall effects of the cooperative's strategy at social, economic and environmental levels and also to link them with its values and principles. 3 The choice of Global Reporting Initiative guidelines allowed a better comparison with other organisations and also facilitated stakeholders' comprehension of the document (Joseph 2012). Indeed, this new structure presents information on performance, as measured through specifically designed indicators, in a much clearer format, thus further stimulating the interest of potential stakeholders, including members and customers.
The change in the type of report generated some positive results. Specifically, positive feedback was obtained on behalf of shareholders and employees, that is, those categories of actors which management considered as priority. From the employees' point of view, appreciated were the clear statements contained in the document and the ease of connecting the actions described to specific dimensions of sustainability. On the other hand, the distribution of the new version of the document among members allowed it to illustrate better to shareholders the participative decision-making process that the cooperative had long been undertaking, and their relevance within the company governance.
Through this process of change, sustainability reporting has increased transparency around the social and environmental impacts of the cooperative, providing a more detailed account about its governance and the activities carried out to strengthen the cooperative's values and principles. The sustainability reporting, allowed the cooperative to understand how sustainability policies and cooperative's values and principles are linked together, and how they interact to create long-term economic value. This process of change was shared between the company and the research team through a systematic review and adjustment both of the method of inquiry and of the reporting structure.
The elements that qualify the sustainability report can be described using the hierarchical model developed by Deegan & Unerman (2006). The model is composed of four hierarchical levels that are the 'why -who -for what -how' stages (Table 4).
Starting from 2008, the positive effects of the approach structured around the measurement of sustainability performance for accountability purposes has led to the implementation of two other management tools that have become an integral part of the sustainability management process of the cooperative: the sustainability annual plan since 2008 and the participatory social plan since 2010. The sustainability annual plan is an ex ante analysis tool about the possible impacts at social, environmental and economic levels of the initiatives planned, with an explicit reference to the stakeholders involved. Similar to a budget plan, the management identifies goals, budget, deadlines, responsibilities and expected impacts on stakeholders of the planned actions having a sustainability dimension. Moreover, the achievement of the targets identified in the sustainability annual plan is monitored and communicated in the sustainability report of the following year. This process, in addition to having a high impact at management level, provides the cooperative with an important opportunity for promoting transparency in stakeholder relations, given that the achievement of the objectives established could be verified in subsequent years.
The sustainability annual plan introduced sustainability themes into the planning phase and linked them to the cooperative's strategies, values and principles in order to show and valorise the links among them. Through it, Unicoop Tirreno was able to evaluate the consistency of tangible actions in the phase of implementation with the set of its own principles and values, through an anticipated evaluation of what would have been the impact of those actions on their stakeholders. In this process, the sustainability reporting had a dual key role. On one side it operated as a feedback tool because it provided key indications for the implementation of new ...................................................................................................................................................................  projects and actions to be promoted in the following years. On the other side it operated as a control tool, and it allowed measurement of the results obtained by the cooperative as compared to the initial evaluation. Some of the employees interpreted this tool as a demonstration of concreteness of top management with respect to sustainability goals, connecting them into a strict process of planning and checking. In a different way, other employees interpreted this process as a demonstration of the interest of the top managers to control their actions, urging them to narrow and close relationships with other colleagues instead of promoting collaborations and internal cooperation.

Why
In this stage the reasons why a company decides to produce a sustainability report are described and explained. The motivations can be different.
Ë Needs to recover the relationship with the owners of the cooperative (consumers-members) and employees, focusing efforts to respect cooperative's principles (mutuality, sustainable development and safeguard of future generations). Ë Desire to raise awareness about the distinctive aspects of the cooperative in new settlements (non-historical territories). Ë Demand to focus on the positive aspects of the cooperative, other than financial performance, such as social and environmental commitment. Ë Need to increase competitiveness and distinctive identity. Who In this stage the stakeholder that a company wants to consider when it defines its corporate social responsibility policies are identified. Their identification is dependent upon the motivations identified in 'why' stage.
Unicoop Tirreno identified a wide range of stakeholders, classified in seven macro-categories, that have been traced to the three pillars of sustainability: Ë Economic sustainability: suppliers, consumers coop-members, consumers not coop-members; Ë Social sustainability: consumers coop-members, employees, local communities; Ë Environmental sustainability: local (and global) communities, associations for environmental protection, cooperative system. For What In this stage the social, environmental and economic expectations of the stakeholders are defined through a process of engagement and dialogue.
Ë Each year, the gap between cooperative's values and sustainability targets and performance was detected. The aim was to reinforce the members participation and stakeholder engagements. Ë The stimulus derived from members and stakeholders led the implementation of new projects. How In this last stage an organisation defines how reporting can be done in practice. The level and quality of information provided vary according to the organisation's desire to be accountable towards its stakeholders.
The report had two purposes: stakeholder engagement tool. The participatory social plan aims to support the meta-planning phase by integrating the logic of top-down and bottom-up approaches. It allows Unicoop Tirreno to mobilise members' and stakeholders' participation in the decision-making process, through the comparison and discussion of some specific issues related to sustainability.
The top management identifies some 'core' themes that would be later discussed by thematic groups. These groups are constituted by cooperative employees from different departments, by members representative of different territories and external stakeholders (such as representatives of local institutions, consumer representatives, local suppliers, cultural associations, environmental associations and others). Each group is therefore called to compare and select a number of proposals that the top management will evaluate for feasibility in terms of opportunities and time. Finally, the actions chosen by the top management become part of the sustainability annual plan. From the point of view of the contents, during the period 2010-2011, the core themes identified as priorities were four: food safety, environmental protection and efficient management of resources, diversity management and social inclusion. Except for the working group related to the social inclusion which was primarily targeted to voluntary associations, the other working groups were composed of a total of 57 stakeholders, among which 12 are members and 14 are employees of the cooperative. From a management point of view, the integration of the participatory social plan with the sustainability annual plan and the sustainability report created a close connection between an active participation of the employees, members and stakeholders during the planning phase, and the measurement of the results during the control phase (Figure 1).
By means of the integration of the above tools, the cooperative has developed a sustainability accounting system composed of two tools useful in the planning phase (the sustainability annual plan and the participatory social plan) and a sustainability report, which was used to estimate the effectiveness of the actions undertaken (measured with sustainability indicators) and to evaluate the coherence between what emerged in the participative planning process and the subsequent actions and results. The outcome of the integration was an increased credibility and transparency of the participative processes, along with a better capacity to measure the level of mutuality achieved and of its link with social and environmental targets.

Level 3 -governance level
The third level detected during the action research project was the 'governance level', through which sustainability issues were included in the cooperative's management process and strategy. The sustainability report drafted each year together with the synthesis report reserved for the top managers have facilitated, over the five years of activity, the identification of innovative projects aimed to intervene on the major issues that have arisen during the accountability phase, as summarised in Table 5.
Initiatives and actions developed over time are closely connected to environmental efficiency (systems of waste management and energy efficiency), labour relations (health and safety and  traditional values with the adoption of more sophisticated management tools, and on the other hand highlighting some internal contradictions and managerial weaknesses. Some projects (such as the adoption of a safety management system, energy auditing systems, valuing and managing diversity programs, and waste management system) have stimulated relevant internal management changes, with the identification of new internal roles and duties. Moreover, some other projects (food safety, ethical label) have given an ethical connotation to mainly commercial activities. The organisational changes have stimulated the identification of new profiles within environmental and safety management and have shown the weakness in competences of the staff in charge, unable to fully understand the new management approach. This has led to an internal reorganisation of some tasks, with the designation of new people in charge. Simultaneously, with regards to valuing and managing diversity, the projects carried out have led to some changes within the stores, since the stores' directors were involved in learning how to manage maternity leave and work-life balance issue. On the other hand, the food safety and ethical label related projects have had an impact on the commercial functions, bear on new ways to manage the supply chain and through a valorisation of ethical products in the stores. However, the middle managers seemed at the beginning preoccupied by the reduction on short-term margins more than seeing the coherence between these projects and the value system of the cooperative. Today it is not yet possible to have clear and complete results about the effectiveness of the projects, as the implemented actions need time to show if and how they have been effectively integrated within the organisation and, above all, to measure the level of benefits and active participation of stakeholders in the long run.

Conclusions
The research has described and highlighted the findings of a five-year action research project carried out from 2006 to mid-2011 within an Italian consumer cooperative, Unicoop Tirreno. Starting from the analysis of Unicoop's historical and commercial characteristics, the main aim of the project was to identify the appropriate instruments to manage the critical demutualisation process that had occurred in Unicoop. A lack of an open and transparent dialogue with employees and members generated the idea, in the top management of the cooperative, to rethink and rebuild the relationship with them. To this end, the dual targets were to rebuild a constructive set of relations in order to enhance employees' and members' participation in the governance and managerial decision making and, concurrently, to reinforce the organisation's identity. The action research project carried out was based on the idea that the management and measurement of sustainability could represent the fil rouge to favour the engagement of employees, members and other stakeholders.
As regards the cooperative management and organisational democracy, the initiatives implemented to satisfy the needs of the employees, members and stakeholders represent examples of how Unicoop has used sustainability management and measurement for increased organisation democracy to diffuse and reinforce its core values. The first tool chosen to mobilise the initial change was the sustainability report. Its development stimulated in turn the implementation of a series of other projects and tools which were implemented to reinforce the level of mutuality of the cooperative and to increase the social and economic value added generated. The final outcome should be the strengthening and improvement of the cooperative's identity and the creation of a more democratic system in which all stakeholders involved in the management of the cooperative can actively contribute in the decision making.
Referring to sustainability measurement, this research represents an innovative experience that can reasonably give a contribution to the academic debate. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is indeed the first case of an action research project in a consumer cooperative that describes and analyses how sustainability accounting has been implemented and enhanced over time. The research demonstrated how the focus on sustainability issues may represent a driver to stimulate changes within a consumer cooperative and how sustainability accounting, composed by internal and accountability tools, may be considered a trustworthy management system capable of involving stakeholders and stimulating and enhancing the cooperative's identity.
As highlighted in the paper, at the beginning of the project, top management identified a dual need to be satisfied: on one side the need to initiate a two-way communication process with employees and members: on the other side the need to increase and enhance the active participation of members and employees in the governance and managerial process of the cooperative.
About this latter point the 'inquiry level' of analysis has highlighted a relevant enlargement, during the five-year period, of the number of employees involved at different levels in the measurement of sustainability. This aspect reflects the progressive strategic value that sustainability has taken inside the cooperative and expresses the increased participation of the various subjects in the process of change. Over time, this continuous improvement represented a powerful drive in the spread of sustainability themes within the cooperative and in connecting sustainability with the founding values and principles of Unicoop.
About the former point, as showed in the 'tool development level', moving from Italian guidelines (GBS) to international guidelines (GRI3 model) indicates the willingness of Unicoop Tirreno to improve its level of accountability and to increase its level of transparency (Adams 2004, Joseph 2012. At the same time, it also opened the door to a real challenge, in which the cooperative accepted the possibility to measure its own limitations. Therefore, the tool offered a greater level of transparency towards external stakeholders, permitting a better measurement of the cooperative's sustainability performance and also to link sustainability themes with the cooperative's strategies, values and principles. Moreover, this phase has provided the stimulus to also develop and introduce inside the organisation two other tools related to sustainability analysis (i.e. the participatory social plan and the sustainability annual plan), whose development facilitated the construction of a sustainability accounting system capable of supporting the plans and to monitor, control and communicate the effects related to the actions promoted by the cooperative.
This research also represents an example of a twin track approach to sustainability accounting, which, according to , turns out to be the most advanced approach and, currently, the least analysed. The research shows the virtuous tie between external accountability and internal decision making, pointing out how the maturity of a sustainability accounting system necessarily requires a complementary development of both dimensions. As shown, the development of both dimensions must take place joining both the technical aspects and the cultural one through a process of mutual exchange and improvement between the two dimensions. Different from previous literature (Larrinaga-González & Bebbington 2001, O'Dwyer 2005, this research points out that organisational and cultural changes connected to the measurement of sustainability can be progressively implemented. In the absence of any change, the initiatives developed in Unicoop to improve the sustainability information could represent expressions of green washing phenomena, with the risk of negative relapse in reputation (Bebbington et al. 2008).
Concerning the identification of the specific learning, the action research has proven the ability of generating effects, both internally and externally to the cooperative. Regarding the internal effects, the study has shown how a sustainability report can give birth to new projects on internal sustainability measurement, promoting therefore an improvement in the sustainability performance. About this point, the involvement of members and employees has proven to be fundamental for the success of the project. On the external side the activity developed during the five-year period demonstrated how the ability to manage, measure and communicate sustainability aspects increased the transparency of the cooperative's actions. It also highlights the relevance of engagement with external stakeholders as a basis to increase the effectiveness of the decision-making process.
In the authors' opinion, there are some main conditions that have led the cooperative to achieve the results described. The first condition is the very strong commitment of the top management, which was able to integrate the feedback deriving from the use of the sustainability report into the development of strategies for the cooperative. The second one concerns the cooperative's wide-ranging vision of its top management, that was able to give a new and modern interpretation to the traditional cooperative values. In this stage the support of a formalised CSR strategy turned out to be essential, as it allowed the development and combination of traditional cooperative values and sustainability tools. The third condition concerns the strong and real involvement of the different areas of the cooperative, which have been efficient in supplying data needed during the reporting and measurement processes, as well as in contributing to the analysis of trends of sustainability indicators in relation to the policies and strategies implemented. The fourth condition is the relevance of communication among different areas of the cooperative, and between the top management and most operational levels, in order to make the sustainability initiatives as clear as possible to all participants. The fifth and last aspect refers to the skill of interpreting the CSR as an approach that can link the vision of 'global markets' to territorial specificities and to other values that characterise the cooperative's heritage.
On the opposite side, the project has shown some weaknesses. These elements were related to the different perception that managers have about the usefulness of the sustainability approach and its related tools. Some of the financial middle managers were indeed not convinced on the opportunity, from a competitive point of view, to adopt tools for measuring performance other than financial. In particular, they stressed that the usefulness and the need to invest resources on sustainability tools was not at all clear; and, due to the international financial crisis, such scepticism has recently even been reinvigorated. In other cases, with reference to the operational level of the organisation, the measure of sustainability performance and the promotion of projects apt to change the organisational structure, were perceived as hostile tools, oriented to control the work of the staff, more than as tools apt to support the operational activities able to guide the decisional processes and promote a concrete stakeholder engagement.
These aspects show how the path towards a complete sustainability strategy, able to reaffirm the cooperative's identity, has been set up, but it still cannot be considered completed. The described project has in fact permitted Unicoop Tirreno to create a path towards a distinctive identity, focused on sustainability. Over time, the renovation of a stronger identity, based on democratic participation and mutuality, might be translated into a competitive advantage and long-term economic value based on trust relationships (Castaldo 2002(Castaldo , 2007. Concerning this point, the economic value created in a long-term perspective may assume a mutualistic connotation only if it is shared with other actors, in a shared-value perspective (Porter & Kramer 2011). Indeed, it is possible to argue that both the sustainability management and sustainability accounting system implemented, based on wide stakeholder engagement processes, may represent a stimulus to develop a system for the creation of shared-value (Porter & Kramer 2011).
In this perspective the topic of sustainability stimulated both new ways of dialogue with employees and members, and new opportunities to consolidate the relationships with other stakeholders with whom the cooperative might share strategies and objectives (in particular local suppliers, local communities, institutions and representatives of civil society, etc.). This aspect, if seen in the light of the 'cooperative model', represents the concept of mutuality (beyond solidarity and philanthropy) and contributes to the design of a new business model based on multi-stakeholder dialogue and on sharing benefits and managerial results. The creation, in the long run, of 'shared value' indicates the capacity of Unicoop Tirreno to link the results of its initiatives with the improvement of economic and social wellbeing of its stakeholders in the territories in which it operates, and it expresses the capacity to achieve the mutual goals of the parties involved in the relations. The commitment to create 'shared value' is therefore important as it encourages both mutuality of interest and stewardship behaviour that will lead to achieving the mutual goals. The final potential benefits, which could be reached, can be identified at two levels: at the macro level, with reference to the influence that the activities of Unicoop Tirreno can have on future generations, territories and local communities, environmental protection, and, finally, on the national cooperative system; at the micro level, as a result of initiatives and programs applied to other categories of stakeholders such as members, consumers, employees and local suppliers (Table 6).
From a methodological point of view, one potential limitation of the project is the characteristics of the action research method. Action research and, qualitative research more generally, lacks knowledge transferability. In action research each intervention is 'one-off' and findings that emerge in that specific experience might not be generalised into other contexts or other settings due to their specific characteristics (Eden & Huxham 1996). Nevertheless, also if the process cannot be replicated in other organisations or cooperatives, some lessons that emerge from the experience (for instance the abovementioned conditions for a successful project) may represent the starting point for other experiences aiming at designing similar paths. Moreover, observations that emerged may have been influenced by the researchers' personal vision which is not value free. Indeed, on one hand, the close relationship with practitioners gave the researchers a rich and truly insightful view. On the other hand, this relationship and involvement can represent a difficulty in a neutral evaluation of that specific research experience.
In conclusion, in the opinion of the authors, the present work leaves open two main research perspectives: the first one is more related to the specific case of Unicoop Tirreno, and the measure of competitive efficiency of the sustainable strategy adopted. In particular, the objective should be an analysis of the link between sustainability strategy and competitiveness, that is, if the choice made by Unicoop Tirreno to redefine its identity through the adoption of sustainability tools can represent a winning factor in terms of competitiveness. On the other hand, the second research perspective is linked with the sustainability accounting within cooperative organisations, and specifically a comparison would be useful between the accountability system of a for-profit business and one related to a cooperative, in order to identify differences and analogies of the two systems.

Notes
1. The social report is a type of sustainability report focused specifically on the social dimension of sustainability, and is typical of the Italian setting.  Future generations Ë All cooperative activities are addressed to promote the attention, protection and promotion of the future generations Local territory and local community Ë The cooperative is a part of the community and gives its contribution to improve their material, moral and cultural well-being Environment Ë The cooperative considers the environment a good of all the people, which should be protected from the attacks of speculation, reckless use of consumer goods, pollution and bad governance National system of cooperation