Assessing the performance of sustainability practices in an Italian food supply chain

Purpose – Managerial practices are essential for activating the potential sustainability transition of the foodsupply chain. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature on the assessment,reporting, and disclosure of value in the food supply chain through a multiple-case study.
Design/methodology/approach – The present study proposes an assessment tool that can disclose the realimpact of managerial practices with an innovative application of the SAFA Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) framework within the context of the Italian meat production supply chain and, thus, enable producers toorient the transition process.
Findings – The multiple-case study analyzes and discusses three years of data (2019–2021) for three mediumand large Italian companies operating in the meat production supply chain. The discussion includes thecomparison of results based on the set of 17 themes and 80 proposed sustainability indicators.
Practical implications – This paper has both theoretical and practical contributions to the currentdiscussion. This work extends the literature on the propensity to measure and report sustainability’performances.
Social implications – This paper fosters the promotion of sustainable managerial practices and expands theliterature on managerial tools to disclose sustainability’ performance.
Originality/value – The supply chain due diligence theoretical background has been adopted to investigatethe (outside-in) supply chain transparency. In addition, the institutional legitimacy theory has been applied as(inside-out) perspective on how companies address their contribution to the production systems transition