Made in Italy and craftsmanship: the transition to sustainability

Made in Italy, in its entrepreneurship, constitutes an invaluable cultural and economic heritage for our country and too is worldwide considered as a synonym of art, quality, uniqueness and craftsmanship. In fact, this sector contrasts "knowing how to do well" against mass production, often poor of quality in materials and finishes, as well as certainly lacking an artistic and innovative dimension. The analysis of the literature highlights that the craftsmanship dimension, in fact, imposes flexibility and adaptability to particular needs, according to a slower pace of production, as well as shorter production lines at the local level, also making use of local craft, skills and traditions, fitting them into regional and national culture and heritage (Murzyn-Kupisz & Hołuj, 2021). In order to avoid making our analysis generic and too vague, it is important to specify that our theoretical background will refer to a specific type of company, i.e. craftsmanship. Our research objective, in the context just described, will be to observe how these realities are moving towards the rapidly expanding race for sustainability, not only as a new sales opportunity, but also, as a necessary condition to guarantee their survival over time. The call to sustainability, especially at the European level with the transposition of the new European Directive 2022/2464/EU approved in November 2022, will lead to an obligation of sustainable reporting to a larger group of companies (Ottenstein et al., 2021). Made in Italy, typically made up of SMEs, will therefore certainly be directly affected by this new scenario, for which it will be appropriate to take the right measures and understand the new logic. In addition to the above, based on an empirical analysis carried out on a sample of companies referring to the blown glass sector, we have analyzed quantitative data in order to bring evidence to our study. The blown glass sector, in fact, corresponds to Italian excellence of craftsmanship, and also, to fine art (Bialek, 2022). In this sector, it is also true, that there is evidence of numerous polluting residues, making the issue of sustainability very relevant and crucial (Hamada et al., 2022). Our empirical research, thanks to the data provided by the association "AssoVetro," the National Association of Glass Industrialists adherent to "Confindustria", will therefore propose to analyze how in a group of sample companies sustainability is managed, valued and reported. In accordance with what has been stated, the purpose of our empirical analysis is to answer the question: "How the glass sector has grown in relation to the impact of sustainability?".