Although the value creation factors can be multiple, Italian business literature has demonstrated a close link between a company’s expansion in size and its ability to generate economic value. Starting from this theoretical background and focusing on social cooperatives – a specific Italian business form –, this research has two goals: 1) investigating the capacity of changes in the ‘operating’ result, shown in the profit and loss statement, to reflect the trend of dimensional expansion of social cooperatives; 2) investigating the intensity of the overmentioned relationship and comparing the operating result’s informative capacity to value added’s one. The methodological approach adopted for this study is quantitative and uses correlation analysis; the sample observed is relatively large, including almost 10,000 social cooperatives operating in Italy at least as of the financial year 2017. The trend in revenue, assets, and the average number of employees of these social cooperatives are investigated to compare them with the trend in the ‘operating’ result, and the value added. The analysis aims to detect the type and intensity of the relationship between these and those. The study’s findings highlight a minimal ability of the ‘operating’ result to capture, through its changes, the trend in revenues, assets, and the average number of employees. Otherwise, the same analysis shows a remarkable aptitude of the value added’s development trend to reflect the social cooperative’s dimensional expansion. Consequently, the analysis revealed the greater informative richness of the value added that allows it to express with considerable precision the relationship existing between the two phenomena juxtaposed: dimensional expansion and sustainable growth of social cooperatives. The study’s originality lies precisely in investigating, from a quantitative perspective, the ‘complex’ information content of financial results to offer new insights into the scientific debate and inspire further studies on the subject.
KEYWORDS: social cooperatives, value added, sustainable growth
