AI-enabled digital platforms in benefit corporations: orchestrating ESG integration and advancing the SDGs
Abstract
This study aims to investigate how an Italian Benefit Corporation (BC) deploys an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital platform to translate its common-benefit purpose into organisational practices and advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Focusing on Everywhere SB, the paper examines how AI-enabled functionalities create technological affordances supporting knowledge processes, stakeholder coordination and the enactment of the BC's dual-purpose mission. A qualitative single-case study design was adopted. Data were collected through two semi-structured interviews with the CEO, direct observation during a seminar and workshops and secondary sources including press materials, the corporate website, the 2023 Impact Report and the Sustainability Report. Data triangulation and systematic qualitative analysis supported the credibility and analytical transferability of the findings. Results identify four interrelated mechanisms: analytical and personalisation affordances, matching and coordination affordances, knowledge-integration and co-creation affordances and governance and accountability mechanisms shaping their responsible actualisation. These mechanisms support employee wellbeing and knowledge generation; connect workers, firms and municipalities through territorial initiatives; and enable more continuous and data-informed stakeholder coordination. Their sustainability relevance remains contingent on privacy, autonomy, human oversight and accountability, with relevance to SDGs 3, 8 and 11. This study integrates stakeholder theory with a technological affordance perspective to explain how AI-enabled functionalities are translated into stakeholder-oriented organisational practices within a BC. It develops a mechanism-based explanation linking technological functionalities, affordances and actualisation, and shows how their combined actualisation can support a transition from bilateral stakeholder engagement towards more continuous, networked and data-informed stakeholder orchestration. Practical implications are provided for managers and policymakers.