Currently the issue of sustainability is at the heart of the debate on corporate governance of business companies. In Europe, an intense activity of revising and updating European rules applicable to financial markets and company law has started. In Italy, such debate became more intense after the legal transplant of the US benefit corporation model in late 2015. The Italian società benefit allows, through a voluntary choice of the founding members or the shareholders’ meeting, to internalise values typical of corporate social responsibility in the articles of association, making them legally binding on the company and the directors. Considering the traditional dichotomy between for-profit entities and non-profit entities, hybrid models such as the benefit corporation appear to struggle in finding an adequate space within capitalist systems and corporate governance theories. This study attempts to offer an interpretative key for understanding these hybrid models, abandoning the classical homo economicus paradigm to embrace a reading based on behavioural law and economics and the Yale approach to economic analysis of law, according to which altruism and beneficence should be considered as ends in themselves, as goods desired by people and for which they are willing to pay a price. In this line of reasoning, benefit corporations and other hybrid models, because of their ability to bring altruistic values into the corporate purpose, departing from shareholder value maximisation as the raison d'être of the corporate form, can be considered as a further manifestation of ‘firm altruism’, given that they are characterised by a deep and lasting impact on the environment and civil society.

目前，可持续性问题是关于商业公司公司治理辩论的核心。在欧洲，修订和更新适用于金融市场和公司法的欧洲规则的活动已经开始。在意大利，这种争论在 2015 年底美国福利公司模式的法律移植后变得更加激烈。意大利社会福利允许通过创始成员或股东大会的自愿选择，将公司社会责任的典型价值观内化在公司章程中，使其对公司和董事具有法律约束力。考虑到营利实体和非营利实体之间的传统二分法，利益公司等混合模型似乎难以在资本主义制度和公司治理理论中找到适当的空间。本研究试图为理解这些混合模型提供解释的关键，摒弃经典的经济人范式包含基于行为法和经济学以及耶鲁大学法律经济分析方法的阅读范式，根据该范式，利他主义和慈善应被视为其本身的目的，是人们想要的商品，并且他们愿意为此付出代价. 在这个推理中，利益公司和其他混合模式，因为它们能够将利他价值带入公司目的，背离作为公司形式存在理由的股东价值最大化，可以被认为是进一步体现“坚定的利他主义”，因为它们的特点是对环境和公民社会产生深远而持久的影响。