Il Sostegno Aziendale alle Arti “Corporate Support for the Arts-CSA”: dalle Sponsorizzazioni agli Ecosistemi cultural

Corporate Support for the Arts (CSA) - corporate investment in arts and culture - remains one of the least theorized dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility. Despite the marked growth of CSA, spanning philanthropy, sponsorship, cultural partnerships, corporate collections, and arts-based initiatives, the academic literature remains fragmented and still lacks an integrative framework. This study addresses that gap through an inductive qualitative investigation of fourteen Italian companies recognized by the Premio Cultura+Impresa award. Applying the Gioia methodology to semi-structured interviews with senior executives responsible for cultural investment, the analysis reveals four qualitatively distinct strategic configurations of CSA, differentiated along three cross-cutting dimensions: the motivations driving cultural investment, the organizational processes through which it is governed, and the impacts organizations perceive themselves as producing. The findings challenge dominant assumptions in CSA scholarship - particularly the transactional/relational binary and the notion of a linear maturity continuum - and document a systematic gap between the public representation of CSA practices and the decision-making logics that emerge from the interviews. The study further shows that the most significant barriers to more advanced forms of cultural engagement are not financial but structural. The resulting framework offers practical orientations for corporate managers, cultural institutions, and policymakers, while opening new directions for research into the organizational and territorial conditions that enable more complex forms of arts-business partnership.