Unravelling the design process of business models from linear to circular: An empirical investigation

In the last years, circular economy has represented one of the most-debated topics in management research. Although the understanding of this industrial paradigm has significantly improved over the last decade, a number of important research questions still remain unanswered. Among them, the design process of business model through which established firms evolve from being linear to circular deserves further investigation. Existing research still falls short to investigate how companies design the dimensions of value creation, value transfer, and value capture of their business models to launch circular products into the market. By leveraging a multiple case study analysis of four companies in the paper and beverage industries that have launched six circular products, the paper examines the process that these companies have followed to face the transition toward a circular business model. The paper contributes to the research field in the intersection between new product development and circular business models, by showing that the process toward a circular business model occurs along three major phases, that is, idea generation, product development, and commercialization. In each phase, companies implement peculiar managerial practices for launching circular products into the market, which typically address all the dimensions of the business model and follows a recurrent path over time.     

Deploying Environmental Management Across Functions: The Relationship Between Green Human Resource Management and Green Supply Chain Management

Balancing environmental, social, and economic performance is today considered a key responsibility that firms have toward society. As a result, academics, practitioners, and political decision makers are increasingly paying attention to environmental management systems improving a full spectrum of environmental performance. In that regard, even if recent literature suggests that environmental management should be deployed through a cross-functional approach, extant literature mostly focuses on independent functional systems. This paper addresses this gap investigating how the deployment of environmental management in the human resource function—adopting green human resource management (GHRM) practices—and the supply chain function—adopting green supply chain management (GSCM) practices—impact on environmental and financial performance. We draw from a multiple-respondent survey of human resource and supply chain managers in multiple industries in Italy. The study suggests that GHRM and GSCM impact on both environmental and financial performance and shows that GHRM and GSCM exert those impacts in a joint fashion. Indeed, our results show that GSCM plays a mediating role in the relationship between GHRM and performance. Overall, our results provide researchers and managers with relevant insights into the cross-functional deployment of the environmental values and principles across functions.     

Buying a Book as a Christmas Gift: Two Routes to Customer Immersion

Although services and retailing are usually regarded as relevant experiential contexts and investments in creating an experiential environment are growing, little consideration has been given to the investigation of the general consumption experiences and their emotions in retailing. By adopting an ethnographic approach to study the buying processes in two Italian bookstores – a small traditional family-run bookshop and a large international chain store – products that, by definition, are high in perceived complexity and symbolism, we present two distinct business models based on different processes of valorisation of purchasers' emotions. The two-path model towards customer immersion represents different strategies to involve consumers emotionally: one is based on increasing the positive emotional load, the other on decreasing the negative emotional load. Decisions about physical layout, display, services and sales assistance should follow consistently.     

Banking crises,labor reforms,and unemployment

Using a sample of 97 countries spanning the period 1980–2008, we estimate that banking crises have, on average, a large negative impact on unemployment. This effect, however, largely depends on the flexibility of labor market institutions: while in countries with more flexible labor markets the impact of banking crises is sharper but short-lived, in countries with more rigid labor markets the effect is initially more subdued but highly persistent. These effects are even larger for youth unemployment in the short term, and long-term unemployment in the medium term. Conversely, large upfront, or gradual but significant, comprehensive market reforms have a positive impact on unemployment, albeit only in the medium term.     

Search practices for discontinuous innovation: scale development and construct validation

Managing innovation and particularly searching for new ideas in a steady state environment is really different than in discontinuous conditions where traditional practices and routines may prove ineffective. This paper reviews and empirically explores the field of search strategies and practices for discontinuous innovation and, for the first time, tests the validity of a ‘discontinuous innovation (DI) search capacity’ construct. Based on a comprehensive literature review on the innovation search stage and on the evidence of more than 80 case studies reported by the Discontinuous Innovation Laboratory, a questionnaire was developed and submitted to a 500 high-tech firm sample. Four DI search dimensions were identified, each consisting of a bundle of interrelated yet distinct practices. We empirically tested the DI search capacity and measured it as a second-order construct by using the structural equation modelling.     

Long-run growth and volatility: which source really matters?

The aim of the article is to analyse the relationship between long-run growth and business cycle volatility. In particular, the main purpose of this article is to identify which source of volatility is most detrimental to growth. Using cross-country data from 1970 to 2000, and several indicators of volatility (such as inflation, exchange rate, government expenditure, output and investment volatility) this article shows that although, all these measures of volatility are remarkably harmful for growth, business cycle investment volatility is the main source that hampers long-run growth. This relation is robust to different measures of business cycle, and to different sub-samples of countries.     

Realizing smiles: Options pricing with realized volatility

We develop a discrete-time stochastic volatility option pricing model exploiting the information contained in the Realized Volatility (RV), which is used as a proxy of the unobservable log-return volatility. We model the RV dynamics by a simple and effective long-memory process, whose parameters can be easily estimated using historical data. Assuming an exponentially affine stochastic discount factor, we obtain a fully analytic change of measure. An empirical analysis of Standard and Poor's 500 index options illustrates that our model outperforms competing time-varying and stochastic volatility option pricing models.     

Past,present and future trends of purchasing and supply management: An extensive literature review

This research aims to evaluate the state of the art of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). This is carried out through a wide, in-depth, and structured examination of published works. More than one thousand papers (i.e., 1055) published in 20 peer-reviewed journals were collected and analyzed to provide a snapshot of PSM research, including the extent of the overall production, the background theory used, the unit of analysis, the research method, and the main topics investigated. Other literature reviews related to PSM have been conducted in the past but have focused primarily on specific topics and/or considering a narrower set of publications. Furthermore, the authors define a framework useful for analyzing the PSM literature and outline the state of the art of PSM research from a content-specific perspective, including an evaluation of the maturity of PSM research as a discipline.     

Entries and Exits in Foreign Markets: Italian Firms' Multinational Expansion in the European Union

This paper focuses on the expansion strategies in foreign markets of a sample of Italian firms during the period 1987-93. The data reveal strong dynamics in entry and exit strategies and an overall increase in Italian firms' foreign manufacturing activities. Firms seem to be restructuring and reorganising their range of activities in view of the new competitive scenario promoted by the completion of the Single European Market. A logit model investigating the determinants of entry in foreign markets is tested at the firm level. The results suggest that firms' specific resources, target industry and foreign country characteristics are important explanatory variables. Some new insights concerning the export substitution effect, the presence of technological sourcing and the multinational/ diversification dichotomy are also discussed.     

Peanut exposure during pregnancy,breastfeeding and complementary feeding: perceptions of practices in four countries

Food allergy is an increasing problem worldwide. Allergy to peanuts is a particular concern, given that this is rarely outgrown and may be associated with life‐threatening anaphylaxis. However, it is unclear what factors are responsible for a perceived increase in prevalence rates. One matter on which scientists agree, however, is that exposure to peanuts early in life is significant – although whether early exposure protects or sensitizes to allergy is unclear. There is no significant research that currently records differences in early life exposure either within or between populations. This exploratory study makes a first step in this direction using focus groups conducted in four countries with disparate ‘peanut experiences’ to characterize early exposure in these. The ultimate aim is to help in the development of a survey instrument to attain nationally representative samples of consumers and hence to use the results from this to compare with allergy prevalence data collected in other parts of the European Union‐funded ‘EuroPrevall’ project. The results in this study not only reveal considerable similarities across countries (e.g. in terms of lack of knowledge of guidelines; lack of changes in feeding behaviour during/after pregnancy, feelings that diet variety in children is important) but also one or two interesting and potentially important differences, such as increased consumption in Bulgarian (and some Spanish) breastfeeding mothers because of the ability of peanuts to facilitate lactation. Study limitations and future study intentions are also discussed.