Sustainability Practices and Greenwashing Risk in the Italian Poultry Sector: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract

Despite the growing recognition of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework by companies as a transparency tool to meet stakeholders’ requirements, a universal standard for ESG reporting is currently lacking, potentially fueling greenwashing phenomena. This study focuses on one of the leading sectors dominated by big players at the Italian level, the poultry sector, with the aim of analyzing how the green transition can be integrated into ESG company identity. This study employs, for the first time, the grounded theory (GT) methodology to investigate how sustainability is “perceived” and “practiced” by the entrepreneurs of the Italian poultry supply chain. The results provide insights into how changes toward greater sustainability can be transformed into concrete pathways that function within the organizational design. The outcome could be the reconfiguration of the organizational design, whereby the practice becomes incisive, or its circumvention, whereby the practice is adopted only superficially. The development of a more standardized ESG reporting system, along with incentivization measures and policies supporting small and medium-sized agrifood companies in the adoption of sustainability practices, could contribute to overcoming the “detachment” between the sustainability “perceived” and “practiced” by agrifood companies and to effectively adopting environmental sustainability as a development strategy.

1. Introduction

Over the last decade, the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards ESG reporting has demonstrated the growing demand for even more transparent statements that help consumers and financial operators verify a company’s financial strength, distress risk, and creditworthiness [1,2].

Companies with better ESG compliance have a potentially higher credit-access rating [3,4,5], demonstrated through scores provided by various financial organizations, such as Bloomberg ESG Data Services [6], Sustainalytics ESG Risk Ratings [7], and RepRisk [8].

Despite the growing focus on creating shared value, a company’s ability to have a social impact and incorporate this mission into its governance system is still at the center of the scientific debate. From an organizational perspective, the concept of responsibility has transformed from an implicit social contract between firms and stakeholders to a strategic commitment that can also guarantee a positive financial return [9,10] and a tool for designing a dialogic relationship between the corporate value system and the external social environment affecting the day-to-day operations [11,12].

More recently, the institutional commitment to the fight against global warming, established through the Paris Agreement [13] and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [14], has helped to affirm the personal responsibility of citizens [15] and investors in making the green transition achievable. The need for transparency and ethics in daily purchasing fuels the interest of investors, as shown by the growing attention to socially responsible investments, which are socially aware mutual funds or exchange-traded funds investing in companies that have a positive social impact thanks to their corporate governance and shared-value creation capacity. The EU Report Taxonomy: Final Report of the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance [16], published in June 2020, represents a substantial paradigm shift, moving—even in the European financial market—the sustainability assessment, understood as ESG criteria compliance, from product to producer and from output to identity.

ESG-based capital allocation qualifies “best-in-class (ESG)” companies in an investment portfolio as more reliable in developing businesses with greater sustainability, for instance, by reducing emissions or favoring supply chains with a higher social impact.

Despite the growing recognition of ESG’s relevance and countries’ regulatory pressures, a universal standard for ESG reporting is not yet available, possibly paving the way for greenwashing [17] or misleading environmental marketing claims.

In recent years, an increasing number of studies have focused on investigating the dynamics between greenwashing and regulatory pressures [18,19,20], the influence of product market competition (PCM), and the risk of financial loss related to market supply pressure [2,21,22,23,24]. According to Baldi et al. [25], although the empirical evidence of greenwashing is lacking, its diffusion in the private sector, particularly in green bonds, is not to be underestimated, considering that deceptive strategies are less subject to the control mechanisms of investors. An improvement in the ESG rating models is advisable to quantify the manufacturing sector’s greenwashing risk, which is more exposed to this phenomenon. Despite these recent contributions, no studies, to our knowledge, have focused on exploring the link between corporate culture’s transformative or adaptive capacity and the exposure to greenwashing risks related to a compliant ESG identity. This study contributes to understanding the risk posed by green transition integration to ESG company identity modeling and the extent to which the dynamics of a market dominated by big players fuel the greenwashing risk in a specific sector.

As one of the leading sectors dominated by big players at the national level, our interest has fallen on the Italian poultry sector. In fact, companies directly involved in animal farming are the most exposed to key ESG issues, and the magnitude of the risks is likely to increase as a result of rising capital costs, the worsening impacts of climate change, and the increasing social concerns over animal welfare and sustainability.

According to Montero-Navarro et al. [26], agriculture, the food industry, and food retail represent areas of significant impact for greenwashing practices. The reason for the use of greenwashing in agriculture is the need for sustainability, while the food industry is specifically linked to consumers’ perceptions, mainly through packaging and labels.

Due to its integration in a global food system, the concept of sustainability in the poultry sector requires a systems approach, encompassing the environmental (pollution, antibiotic use, and biodiversity); social (animal welfare); economic; and institutional dimensions [27]. According to LCA studies on poultry production [28,29], the major environmental hotspots can be attributed to three separate sources: feed production; direct farm energy use, which represents one of the metrics determining companies’ ESG performance; and emissions from housing and manure management. The high contribution of about 70% to the global warming potential from feed production, processing, and transport [30] can be attributed to the use of soybean and palm oil as primary protein sources imported from South America. The use of electricity for ventilation, automatic feeding, and lighting has a large impact on primary energy use (16–38%), together with the gas and oil consumed for heating in pullet systems and the incineration of dead birds in layer systems (8–14%) [31]. The emissions from housing and manure management represent the main component of the acidification and eutrophication potential, contributing up to 40 and 60%, respectively, mainly due to the volatilization of ammonia and the loss of nutrients in surface water and groundwater [31].

As reported in the literature, the challenges associated with the implementation of sustainability practices have escalated [32], and, at the same time, the comprehension of how integrated systems leverage financial, social, and environmental benefits represents a research gap [33]. The pressure to achieve sustainability applied by stakeholders, who push towards the integration of ESG into companies’ identities, contributes to the creation of a gap between the intent and implementation of sustainability practices within a company’s culture. In fact, sustainability communication not coupled with actual practices is becoming increasingly frequent [21] due to the intrinsic benefit of displaying an environmentally concerned image. The consequence is a significant opportunity to gain profits by making misleading claims and declarations about products following the general trend of ESG. The connections between sustainability and business have been investigated from a theoretical point of view through different approaches, spanning multiple areas [34]; however, recourse to grounded theory appears to be scarce, even though it can yield numerous benefits in applied research [35]. The investigation of social responsibility in poultry farms using such a methodology has only been reported by Mendoza et al. [36], who explored how social responsibility is managed and implemented in different poultry farms through their economic and environmental contributions in the Philippines. Other studies that have adopted a grounded theory approach have focused on green business development, leading to some relevant insights: first, firms interpret the topic of sustainability in specific practices rather than abstract models [37]; second, firms’ adoption of sustainable practices can be promoted or blocked by factors such as corporate views and organizational mechanisms [38]; and third, there is a process of influence and a push for conformity among firms that can facilitate or hinder the development path toward greater sustainability [39]. Grounded theory has proven to be well-suited to applied research contexts such as the current study, since it allows for the connection of phenomena detected in the field with theoretical explanations and interpretations [40]. Secondly, it represents a powerful and versatile method for investigating complex social phenomena [41]: in fact, it allows researchers to increase, starting from qualitative data, the amount of knowledge related to the processes underlying complex phenomena, such as those investigated in depth in the present work, which analyzes the pathways of organizational change through which poultry companies may or may not introduce sustainability practices.

The present study intends to focus on the case study of the Italian poultry sector, since the national poultry production fabric comprises a plurality of agrifood companies controlled by a few firms. These big players provide animals, feedstuffs, and technical and veterinary support to the farmers according to the terms of the agistment contract; in this vertically integrated production system, two subjects—the owners, represented by large and medium-sized poultry- and egg-processing companies, and the stockbreeder—join together to practice animal breeding and related activities [42]. The stockbreeder makes his resources (premises and equipment) and workforce available and directly acquires part of the production inputs (energy, water, litter, etc.).

In 2018, the national poultry and egg sector recorded a turnover of approximately EUR 5700 million, of which EUR 4450 million was for meat and EUR 1250 million was for eggs, confirming the central role played by the Italian poultry sector in the national agrifood sector. Upstream of the supply chain, over 8700 poultry farms employ 38,500 breeders. Half of the farmed poultry are broilers, and 35% are laying hens. Production and employment, however, are concentrated in a relatively limited number of larger enterprises in three regions (Veneto, Lombardy, and Emilia-Romagna), accompanied by a large number of rural-type farms distributed throughout the country. In 2020, the Italian production of poultry meat amounted to 1,389,900 tons, with a consumption of 1,293,300 tons, equal to a per capita consumption of 21.55 kg [43]. Moving on to egg production, Italian production stands at over 12.2 billion eggs, with a national per capita consumption of 13.4 kg; this represents approximately 214 eggs a year between direct and indirect consumption, considering that 40% of the product is used in the food industry in the form of egg products. Production in 2020 was guaranteed by 41 million laying hens housed in over 2600 farms, of which 1444 were large farms [44].

To prevent greenwashing phenomena, the poultry sector has begun to play its part in the transition toward more sustainable production models, and the Declaration of Berlin [45] signed in 2021 is a clear expression of this. Through this declaration, the European Association of Poultry Processors and Poultry Trade (AVEC) announced the commitment of the European poultry sector to developing a sustainability charter with the ambitious goal of combining environmental, social, and economic sustainability and demonstrating a high level of responsibility in addressing the challenge of climate change.

By applying the grounded theory methodology for the first time to explore how sustainability is “perceived” and “practiced” in the poultry sector, the purpose of this paper was to investigate how entrepreneurs in the poultry supply chain define sustainability, how they represent it on a conceptual level, and which aspects they emphasize. The theoretical contribution of the present paper is to indicate how change toward greater sustainability can be transformed into concrete pathways that function within organizational design. In fact, by investigating how entrepreneurs organize and articulate the different components of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social), it is possible to derive insights into the strategies that may be adopted by decision-makers to implement daily sustainability practices.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Grounded Theory

Grounded theory was originally developed by Glaser and Strauss [40], and it was chosen as the most appropriate method for this study for two reasons. First, it is an inductive method, arising from the need to connect everyday facts and phenomena with theoretical explanations and interpretations [40]. Second, GT represents a powerful and versatile method for investigating complex social phenomena [41], conferring the ability to understand the relations and dynamics explaining observed reality; it focuses on gaining knowledge about the processes underlying complex phenomena from qualitative data [46]. GT has also been used for organizational research, which is typically a complicated task when performed using purely quantitative and rigid approaches, while benefiting from the flexibility and pragmatism of qualitative approaches [47,48].

After 1967, the method evolved into different versions with separate terminology and realization paths as many authors developed different perspectives [49]. We are now able to discern three approaches in GT: traditional, interpretative, and constructivist [50]. In the present study, we decided to follow the interpretive approach, which was developed by Strauss and Corbin to cope with the excessive rigidity of the positivist approach [50]. It proved to be the most appropriate for our purpose: in fact, it allowed us to understand “[…] the actual production of meanings and concepts used by social actors in real settings” [51] (p. 457), which meets the needs for scientific research in real organizations and enterprises [52,53]. In interpretive approaches, the distance of the data from the researcher’s personal feelings is maintained through the constant comparison of categories [54].

Since organizations are socio-technical systems, selecting this methodology allowed us to analyze concrete aspects related to production and other intangible aspects such as corporate image and culture. In addition, there are no known examples of the application of grounded theory studies to meat and egg production, while several studies have adopted this methodology in the field of sustainability (e.g., [39,55]).

The analysis was developed in three steps: (1) open coding, the initial stage of the coding process, in which a line-by-line analysis was performed, data were compared, concepts were identified, and their properties and dimensions were discovered; (2) axial coding, the second step, described in Corbin and Strauss (1990) [56] but absent in Glaser, in which the decomposed data were put back together and connections between categories and subcategories, properties, dimensions, and relationships were determined; and (3) selective coding, whereby a core category was selected and related to all other categories, integrating them into an abstract level of analysis [57].

2.2. Subjects

Before contacting the subjects, a list of poultry companies in the Lombardy area was examined, and we selected those that had been founded at least 15 years ago: this criterion was included under the assumption that this time frame would be adequate for a company to have developed awareness about the functioning of the poultry market, its potential, and its intrinsic obstacles. Although we did not introduce selection criteria based on company size, the poultry enterprises included had fewer than 250 employees; this resulted in a narrowing of perspectives to the viewpoint of small and medium-sized enterprises, making large enterprises underrepresented in the sample.

In the first instance, we interviewed 6 rural entrepreneurs in the poultry sector, and then theoretical sampling (the process of data collection that supports the generation of theory) guided the selection of further subjects. In line with theoretical sampling, participant selection was informed by the analysis and coding of the interviews: as categories were developed and refined, participants were selected for their ability to provide information that would help verify or saturate the categories [40,58]. As Saunders et al. state, [59]: “Decisions about when further data collection is unnecessary are commonly based on the researcher’s sense of what they are hearing within interviews, and this decision can therefore be made prior to coding and category development” (p. 1899). Saturation was determined to have been reached when new data did not add meaningful contributions to the theory being developed [60] and no new category emerged [59], in line with the literature. Normally, it is possible to establish most of the codes and reach data saturation within the initial 15 interviews [61,62,63,64]. In the present work, since subjects pertaining to similar areas and companies of comparable size (under 250 employees) were interviewed, saturation was reached within the first 10 interviews: as Thompson [65] indicates, saturation is affected by the scope of the research, and on average GT papers report samples of 25 interviews.

The employment areas of the subjects are shown in

Table 1. Proportion of subjects interviewed by their position in the supply chain.

Organizational Field	Subjects (%)
packaging	2 (6.67%)
pharmaceutical	2 (6.67%)
feed production	9 (30.00%)
technology and plants	5 (16.67%)
selection and breeding	2 (6.67%)
veterinary	1 (3.33%)

. Since theoretical saturation was achieved by interviewing subjects mainly from breeding and feed production in the first stage, subjects from other areas of the supply chain were interviewed in order to test the tightness of the preliminary code system developed. However, no bias emerged regarding how different actors in the production chain interpreted sustainability in the poultry sector; rather, the expansion of the type of subjects increased the possibility of reinforcing the categorical system through further comparative analysis [66].

2.3. Data Collection

We conducted the interviews in three phases: (1) from May to September 2021, we conducted the first six interviews in the meat and egg production sector; (2) on 9 September 2021, on the occasion of a poultry fair in Rimini (Italy), we performed twenty additional interviews with representatives of different segments of the supply chain; and (3) from September to December 2021 we interviewed the last three subjects, one of whom was a vet.

Overall, thirty interviews were conducted, with an average duration of 45 min. Six interviews were performed in Lombardy.

2.4. Study Limitations and Recommendations

Research in real-world organizations tends to favor qualitative paths, and this constitutes a potential limitation, since these tend to focus on specific sectors. Therefore, it might be useful to multiply the areas of insight into other sectors of the corporate world: this could lead to a greater understanding of how sustainability practices can fit into various organizational designs.

3. Results

An overall representation of the selected theoretical model can be found in Figure 1. According to this model, the organization is committed to the production process, which involves calculating and organizing production, but also to the management of interdependencies. Marketing, which operates through defining and valorizing, can be interpreted as a way in which the organization controls the components of the environment occupied by competitors and customers.

Interdependence with the environment takes place on two levels: that of other actors in the production chain, who can be controlled through alliances, and that of institutional actors, who instead influence the production process through decisions in an unpredictable way. From this interdependence stem regrets for the past (when interdependencies appeared less intrusive), complaining, excusing, and undergoing.

In this context, if sustainability practices were to insert themselves into the core of the production process, they would succeed in translating into genuine choices and transformations; on the contrary, if they insert themselves into the marketing vector, they risk remaining at a superficial level and not making significant changes.

Below are the results of the analysis phases, broken down by the categories that emerged during the selective-coding phase. In total, three macro categories emerged, capable of saturating the interviews and other materials collected. In presenting the results, we opted to start with the selective-coding phase, since the open-coding phase was not very informative for the purpose of theoretical construction. For each selected code, the underlying axial codes are indicated; in addition, samples of the open codes are included for each axial code in order to illustrate the underlying inductive categorization process.

3.1. Results from the Axial Coding Phase

3.1.1. Adaptation

The core category emerging from the analysis referred to how organizational functions operate together as a whole in terms of mutual adaptation. The search for adaptation among organizational components can be understood within the concept of organizational alignment, which is a factor underlying an organization’s ability to generate profit [67]. Poultry businesses qualify as systems in which different parts work together to manage, organize, and preserve their primary task, producing meat and/or eggs. Operations are organized into functions that guarantee production, supply, and selling and prevent market fluctuations and unpredictable events. The adaptation process consists of three facets, displayed in

Table 2. Facets of the adaptation process as they emerged from open coding.

Category	Subcategory
organizing production	adapting to changing needs
	composing the feed
	delimiting the scope of action
	adaptation between parts
	buffering market fluctuations
	horizontal distinction
	vertical distinction
	concatenate operations
	dividing market into allowances
	transferring strategies
	balance maintenance
	scheduling
	market shaping
	comparison between supply chains
calculating	relating costs to production
	connecting animal welfare to returns
	costs of the space
	compensating loss of production
building alliances	building trustworthiness
	satisfying customers
	satisfying stakeholders
	betraying expectations
	stabilizing business connections
	local connections

: organizing production, calculating, and building alliances.

Production requires flexibility. When reacting to external market requests, but also when meeting the internal needs of the chickens, the owners adapt production and procurement to changing conditions: what is effective one day or one week may not be transferable to another day or week. In particular, this requires a clear view of the components of the plant, the input it needs, its production and storage capacity, and the material paths through the plant machinery; this enables owners to buffer fluctuations and calibrate production under new conditions.

However, production works best when it is predictable, because changes in productivity translate into economic gain or loss. Farmers have to translate each process into a potential cost and benefit and relate costs to each other to guarantee overall economic stability. As shown in the literature, the mutual adaptation of organizational components is a complex, nonlinear phenomenon, well represented by neural network models [68]; however, the agricultural entrepreneurs resorted to heuristic methods based on lessons learned in the field from past experience through a trial-and-error process, which meant that the economic performance was never optimal.

The subjects also revealed that they employed strategies to keep the organization as steady as possible, particularly by controlling the environment, which comprises other organizations (including competitors) and customers (including frequent customers). Trustworthiness works as a further stabilizing strategy, and it develops with respect to suppliers and customers in terms of satisfaction; this dynamic gives rise to local systems based on hybrid human–business relationships.

In terms of adherence to protocols and guidelines, the need to maintain fixed balances among the industrial operations that underlie the core business can be an obstacle: since any fluctuation introduces uncertainty and requires the rearrangement of the production system, as the interviewees stated, attempts are made to hinder the evolution toward greater sustainability, unless this is itself part of the core business, as in the case of organic farms.

3.1.2. Identity

During the interviews, all interviewees conveyed narratives in a spontaneous way attributable to the organization’s identity, such as statements about their values, their history, and the kind of company they felt they were in relation to other companies. Identity is the image that a company conveys of itself through storytelling, and the subjects tended to build an image of what a poultry enterprise really is; as emerged from the literature, organizational identity is about self-attributed meaning, the attempt to define oneself distinctively from others, that is, an answer to the question “who am I?” [69]. The identity discourse was mainly based on three subcategories: regretting the past, valorizing, and defining, as displayed in

Table 3. Facets of organizational identity as they emerged from open coding.

Category	Subcategory
regretting the past	depicting the origin
	connecting present to past
	comparing to the past
	signaling a breaking point
defining	comparing kinds of farming
	comparing theory and practice
	leveling out the differences
	comparing organic and nonorganic
	describing current practices
	relating identity to the selling channel
	underlining distinctive features
	defining according to the production scale
valorizing	coherence between practice and values
	declaring adhesion
	referring to rural history
	attachment to choices
	avoiding waste
	questioning
	intention to change
	considering new feeds

.

Respondents adopted a distant, idealized past as a reference point and often emphasized the similarity with the origin of their enterprise. Comparisons occurred not only between past and present but also between different types of production (e.g., organic and nonorganic, big firms and small production); this was a kind of self-definition process, revealing that positioning in relative terms is a core representational process and discursive practice. This was also the point at which the interviewees revealed what concrete actions they took to be sustainable and how likely they were to adopt new practices in order to improve their overall sustainability.

According to the interviewees, starting an agricultural enterprise is driven not by money but by passion. This value can be described as being of the espoused and attributed type [70], since it is both an established way of narrating an organization’s values, with marketing spin-offs, and a way of identifying an organization in the marketplace. Passion comes from caring for the natural environment through actions that respect traditions. Traditional values and customs guarantee environmental conservation because humans, animals, and nature can live together in a balanced and cooperative way. However, in the past, everything also seemed more straightforward, less regulated, and more capable of providing wealth. The breaking point appeared in participants’ narratives as a moment of transition, from an ideal past to a present that appeared complicated, bureaucratized, and impoverished.

Reference to the past can play an important role for organizations as the foundation of organizational aspirations and goals [71]. The past thus assumes the value of a founding element of identity, but this is also defined through other strategies, especially comparative ones. In particular, comparing different types of poultry production is important, as it allows one to differentiate one’s own business from others, which may vary in scale and certification, but also to define the poultry sector as a unitary, homogeneous sector. The area of value includes the consideration of possible innovations, the scope for future development, the projections for sustainability issues, and the practices already implemented in a habitual way.

The area of identity seems to be the most flexible and thus the most willing to assimilate change: in fact, none of the companies interviewed shied away from confronting the challenges associated with sustainability. However, since the operations in which the area of identity is embodied are those of marketing, the real risk is that if sustainability practices occur only in this area, leaving the area of adaptation untouched, we fall back into greenwashing tactics.

3.1.3. Lack of Power

The power of an organization can be defined in Weberian terms as the opposite of dependence [72], that is, power coincides with the ability to make decisions without or with few constraints. Organizational power was a major concern, as the analysis revealed. Respondents reported great difficulties in dealing with the guidelines that have gradually been introduced and that sometimes require significant changes in the structure of facilities. As displayed in

Table 4. Facets of the lack of power as they emerged from open coding.

Category	Subcategory
complaining	signaling injustices signaling failures
excusing	connecting abusiveness to unfairness
	finding workarounds
	adapting to a norm
	excusing unsustainable practices
	degeneration of good principles
	threatening
undergoing	submitting to an external will
	recalling others’ responsibility
	highlighting the main problem
	not accepting changes
	feeling protected by organic labels
	blaming the market
	international competition
	not accepting uncertainty
	predicting changes
	need for help

, the complaints emphasized the status of powerlessness, which turned into a major driver for breaking certain rules, especially those that people considered absurd, unnecessary, and unfair. The combination of these conditions could lead to forms of disempowerment, since control and self-efficacy are threatened by the state of uncertainty and learned helplessness [73]. In describing their business and its development, interviewees pointed to numerous elements that constrained action and were becoming a real threat to the business’s survival; the element that characterized these accounts, centered on a sense of injustice, was the impossibility of having control and a voice. In fact, the discourse of powerlessness could become a device to justify greenwashing practices that circumvent the need for deep organizational change.

3.2. Selective Coding

In the transition to selective coding, the three categories that emerged were retained, as they were able to organize and saturate the data collected from the interviews while at the same time providing a theoretical framework that could guide interpretation. The three areas corresponded to three areas of organizational life and function: adaptation, identity, and power (which emerged in the present work as “lack of”). The area of adaptation encompassed all the arguments related to the organization’s need for subsistence, the area of identity pertained to the image that the company projected to the outside world, and ‘the lack of power’ area included the constraints on the company. It was possible to superimpose on this pattern that emerged from the data a model of sustainability, concluding that: for poultry supply chain entrepreneurs, economic sustainability is the most relevant component; environmental sustainability is a possible interest in terms of environmental image; and social sustainability, on the other hand, is not contemplated.

4. Discussion

As the ESG framework becomes increasingly important to investors and consumers, the issues pertaining to the meat industry are becoming progressively apparent. The meat industry as a whole has long been recognized for its poor work practices, adverse environmental and animal welfare impacts, and potential public health risks [74]. The sector’s huge contribution to climate change and deforestation is being examined due to recently widespread media attention. The European Green Deal set out a well-defined path for transforming the EU into the first continent with zero climate impact by 2050, involving the economies and societies of all 27 Member States reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to the levels of 1990. In particular, the Farm to Fork Strategy [75] at the heart of the Green Deal and the Commission’s agenda for achieving Sustainable Development Goals addresses the global challenges of achieving sustainable food systems. The poultry sector is committed to playing its part in the transition towards more sustainable production models, and the Declaration of Berlin [45] signed in 2021 is a clear expression of this. Through this declaration, the European Association of Poultry Processors and Poultry Trade (AVEC) announced the commitment of the European poultry sector to developing a sustainability charter with the ambitious goal of combining environmental, social, and economic sustainability and demonstrating a high level of responsibility in addressing the challenge of climate change. Nevertheless, according to Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) data [76], three out of four global meat and dairy giants conceal the full extent of their emissions or have not set global reduction targets. Therefore, adequate ESG risk and opportunity monitoring and management has become an integral part of business resilience in sectors such as intensive animal agriculture.

The European Union currently has the highest number of policies and interventions related to sustainable finance, with a growth of 96% since 2000; in 2021 the PRI, the world’s leading proponent of responsible investment, identified 159 new or revised policy instruments [77]. The increasing number of regulations makes it harder for companies to be compliant and implement changes on time, leading to self-made rules and adaptations [77]. According to Yu et al., firms with poor ESG performance practice greenwashing when disclosing large quantities of ESG data [78].

Moving to the Italian context, according to the ISTAT SDGs 2021 Report [79], only 2.5 companies (with more than three employees) out of 100 in the period 2016–2018 had drawn up environmental and sustainability financial statements. The share grew in proportion to the size of the company (19.6% for companies with 250–499 employees, 34.4% for those with over 500) and the regulatory constraints on nonfinancial reporting. The agrifood sector is not among the most active in the production of sustainability reports, despite the growing consumer demand for transparency. In a supply chain led by major players, such as the Italian poultry supply chain, the criteria for evaluating the beneficial effects of compliance with ESG criteria and ESG integration may not be clear, as they are influenced by peer-pressure dynamics.

The risk of greenwashing in manufacturing companies is all the higher when the legislative environment is deregulated or ESG compliance control systems are weakly adopted. The absence of a reporting system and methods for formulating universally accepted indicators has resulted in a great deal of heterogeneity in the quantitative assessment of companies as being among the “best in class (ESG)” or, in any case, adhering to a univocal definition of sustainability. The rating agencies increasingly committed to defining their evaluation models based primarily on interviews with the company board should consider the cultural and environmental factors and supply chain dynamics connected to the actual ability of a company to implement a transformative policy in its governance. The ESG performance rating should also consider external factors such as actual market pressure and the absence of strict ESG compliance monitoring policies or measures to determine greenwashing risk.

The results obtained through this study provide us with food for thought on which strategies entrepreneurs in the poultry sector might adopt to implement daily sustainability practices. The dynamic that seems to best encompass the linear and nonlinear aspects of organizational action is that of adaptation, perhaps one of the central concepts when discussing organizations. From a review of the literature [80], it appears that the theme of organizational adaptation encompasses functions related to resource procurement, business-model definition, and strategy, as well as aspects related to routines, knowledge, and stakeholder management. In the model proposed here, the function of adaptation subsumed those codified as the calculation and organization of production, but also that of creating strategic alliances. In contrast to what has been reported about the poultry sector in official documents, the networks among the various players seem to work better for predictability and uncertainty reduction at all stages of the supply chain than for the diffusion of innovations and know-how. The agistment contract mechanism succeeds in bringing stability to the system and reducing fluctuations, and respondents described it as an advantage that was worth the trade-off of reduced earnings. According to these findings, one should not consider introducing sustainability practices in addition to other practices, but the adaptation of the whole system is required to make such changes possible [81].

However, the importance of organizational identity, which is accompanied by image and culture [82], also emerged in the interviewees’ discourse. Organizations are configured as having identities in that they define themselves through a set of enduring and distinctive characteristics [83], but also in relation to similar organizations [84].

In the present work, a tendency emerged among organizations to define themselves by the ancient values that poultry activity invokes, which in turn almost intrinsically call up the idea of environmental, but not economic or social, sustainability. In this sense, it seems that qualifying the poultry supply chain as ancient and linked to traditional values can reinforce the idea that environmental sustainability already exists in the very nature of the organization. This way of arguing that one is by nature already sustainable actually leaves little room to consider the adoption of additional sustainable practices. These practices fall into the area of valorization, whereby solutions such as photovoltaic panels, increased energy efficiency, and the use of insect-based or reduced soy-based feeds are valorized but are not automatically on the horizon as possible choices in the short term: perceiving the value of a possibility does not necessarily imply that it will be implemented [85,86].

“Lack of power” was the category that brought together and highlighted the most problematic aspects of the relationship between poultry enterprises and sustainability practices. Picking up on the discussion that emerged in the “adaptation” category, the aspect of sustainability that poultry enterprises regarded as a priority was the economic aspect, viewed as a survival criterion; if surviving is difficult, the other factors appear secondary and ancillary. What bore witness to the difficulties faced by organizations in surviving and maintaining balance was the discourse on the lack of power, which in turn served as a basis for justifying questionable conduct. Operational uncertainty increases as an organization is less able to control and buffer its processes [87], and this causes a cascading effect that is likely to undermine productivity [88]; in this sense, innovation can also become an element of risk for a company, as it introduces a share of uncertainty, and some entrepreneurs may develop resistance to change [89], especially if they are small- to medium-sized companies that exist with the constant feeling of being squeezed by the market and its constraints.

5. Conclusions

This study showed that sustainability, understood both as a subject that stakeholders can address and as a concretely implemented practice, is not central to poultry sector organizations unless they are organic businesses. Of the three semantic areas that saturated the analysis of the interviews, none contained sustainability as a central and crucial theme. Rather, there was a willingness to adopt sustainable practices and to innovate only in terms of a mission statement linked to marketing and corporate image. On the other hand, a position of absolute pre-eminence was held by the discourse on the organization’s need to maintain an optimal balance between internal and external needs, to manage inputs and outputs in such a way that they are as predictable as possible, and to avoid production oscillating excessively around predetermined standards.

According to economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability, it can be said that the poultry entrepreneurs interviewed assigned a pivotal role to economic sustainability. However, this appeared to conflict with environmental and social sustainability, so priorities had to be chosen. Supposing that we adopt a vision of the organization as a system capable of managing the productive inputs and outputs that make possible the achievement of the primary task (e.g., [90]), we can say that the introduction of practices related to environmental sustainability (and even more so those related to social sustainability) represents not only a cost but also a destabilizing factor and is recognized more as a risk than an opportunity; this could limit and threaten a transformative vision of production systems. Hence the need to assign priorities, with economic sustainability taking the lead; environmental sustainability coming second, albeit in an instrumental way; and social sustainability disappearing entirely from the interviewees’ discourse.

The absence of an assessment of this component in ESG financial rating opens the way for an increase in the risk of greenwashing and, in any case, encourages manufacturing companies that are less-equipped for green investments away from a transformative path in their ESG-compliant identities.

The fact that, in the European Union, the adoption of sustainability practices is currently left to the discretion of entrepreneurs, coupled with the lack of performance indicators in this regard, limits the discourse on environmental sustainability to a desirable but distant future. In contrast, in the present, the concern for economic sustainability prevails. On the other hand, it emerged in the discourse of the entrepreneurs that the gradual introduction of requirements and new standards from external sources reduced the possibility for small and medium-sized enterprises to control productivity-related dynamics: innovations related to the increased sustainability of facilities thus become a risk factor that, in the absence of controls, is likely to be circumvented as much as possible.

Given these conditions, the likelihood that environmental sustainability practices will be taken into account increases, but in a manner subordinate to the need to maintain economic sustainability; if this is threatened, the risk of greenwashing may increase [17], which means the adoption of the issue of environmental sustainability as a ploy and not as a development strategy. The development of a more rigorous definition of sustainability aligned with standard ESG reporting systems, along with incentive measures and policies supporting small and medium-sized agrifood companies in the adoption of sustainability practices, could contribute to overcoming the “detachment” between the sustainability “perceived” and “practiced” by agrifood companies, who try to project the best image of themselves in a market dominated by big players, unintentionally fueling greenwashing and misleading environmental marketing claims. Prioritizing ESG could be a profit and value driver for companies, but a committed company culture and sustainable implementation are necessary to achieve lasting benefits and competitive advantage.

The theoretical contribution of the present paper was to indicate how change toward greater sustainability can be transformed into concrete pathways that function within organizational design; the outcome could be the reconfiguration of organizational design (i.e., the practice becomes incisive) or its circumvention (i.e., the practice is adopted only superficially). This might serve as an investigative basis for further studies that focus on organizational change induced by profound transformations in the market and task environment [91].