Less is more in the age of Information overload: the paradigm shift from a shareholder- to a stakeholder-oriented market

This paper aims to examine the innovations introduced by Di-rective 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2014 and its transposition measures in Italy (considering the Legislative Decree No. 254 of 30 December 2016, and the recent regulation by the national Supervisory Authority) and in other Euro-pean countries, as part of a wider research work on non-financial in-formation statements (“NFSs”) and listed companies operating within the European markets. It is designed to verify the effectiveness of the tools offered, with the intent of developing a system which can (i) combine, also through the NFSs, long-term profitability, social justice, and environmental protection, and thus (ii) prevent risks to sustaina-bility and (iii) increase the confidence of investors and consumers. The article is structured in several parts, striving to examining the European regulation, focusing on the NFS comparative and Italian scenario, by offering a descriptive and empirical analysis of the mat-ter, as well as offering some systemic conclusions, in particular with reference to social interest and to the most suitable way to disclose such information. Ultimately, the paper is intended to provide the reader with a critical overview of the current non-financial information framework, as it applies at European and at Member State level. Nevertheless, in a forward-looking sense, this piece seeks to understand whether, and how, the issue of non-financial statements can actually (i) modify the actual corporate dialectic within companies required to disclose non-financial information; (ii) improve the accountability of such compa-nies, as well as from the point of view of corporate social responsibil-ity (“CSR”); and (iii) involve investors, primarily institutional ones, in the “life” of those companies which are subject to the NFS regime.