Which factors are perceived as obstacles for the growth of Italian academic spin-offs?

During the last decades, academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to their ability to advance industrial application of scientific knowledge. In the past, scholars believed that these organisations were subjected to fast growth after their establishment. Only in the last decade, scholars realise that the fast-growing perspective hypothesised was an oversimplification, as the majority of high-tech academic spin-offs growth slowly or remain small in size for long time. The aim of our study is to investigate the reasons that inhibit the growth of established academic spin-offs, focusing on the Italian context. Through the implementation of the Delphi technique and of the fuzzy logic we derive new and relevant results, for scholars, spin-offs’ managers and policy-makers.     

中小型家族企业人力资源管理探析

本文立足于中小型家族企业的特征,从引才、留才、育才等方面详细分析了中小型家族企业在人力资源管理方面存在的危机,并较详细的提出了解决这些危机的对策。     

One of many roads to industry 4.0? Technology,policy, organisational adaptation and worker experience in ‘Third Italy’ SMEs

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is a technological framework and policy programme that emerged in Germany in the 2010s, promising to revitalise manufacturing and revalue work by means of intelligent productive systems. The paradigm's cross-national diffusion raises questions about its context-dependent adaptation. This article focuses on the Italian I4.0 programme and its implementation among medium-sized manufacturing companies in the country's Veneto region. It analyses Italian policy and company strategies through the perceptions and experiences of managers, unionists and workers. The research highlights how a system dominated by small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—one with limited technological investment and without a coordinated system of industrial relations—reshaped the I4.0 policy goals, technological developments and work outcomes. The results show how the features of the productive context are associated with a far less ambitious I4.0 plan, the limited and selective adoption of technology at the level of firms, and modest top-down organisational changes that do not fulfil the promises of the project.     

Does corporate social responsibility impact equity risk? International evidence

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Based on a large panel of listed firms from 52 countries in the period 2002–2020, we investigate the relationship between corporate social...     

Don’t put all your green eggs in one basket: Examining environmentally friendly sub-branding strategies

Although marketers are increasingly developing strategies to promote environmentally-friendly images for their brands, little is known about green brand architecture strategies. The current study examines two sub-branding strategies and finds that when green products are dispersed across several sub-brands (vs. concentrated within one sub-brand), consumers are more likely to infer that the overall parent brand is environmentally friendly. The sincerity of the company’s sustainability efforts is found to mediate the effects of the sub-branding strategy on consumers’ eco-friendly beliefs of the parent brand. Specifically, consumers associate dispersed strategy (vs. concentrated strategy) with intrinsic motive (vs. extrinsic motive) of the company’s sustainability policy. As a result, dispersed strategy instead of concentrated strategy promotes spillover effects of sustainability to the parent brand, demonstrating the impact of brand structure on spillover to the parent brand equity. Managerial implications are discussed related to the automobile company’s sub-branding strategy.     

Using the LSAT as a labor market thermometer for lawyers

We rely upon a 50-state, 20-year panel to find that the number of Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) takers is only loosely related to economic conditions—although slightly more for men than for women, who in 2020 accounted for 58% of all LSAT takers. The number of test takers rose more than 35% between 2014 and 2020. This wave accentuated an already existing downtrend in the median real income of lawyers, and thus provides support for the hypothesis that most states have more lawyers than they need.     

Information Asymmetry in Business-to-Business Negotiations: A Game Theoretical Approach to Support Purchasing Decisions with Suppliers

Group Decision and Negotiation - The digital transformation confronts purchasing and supply management (PSM) with numerous new challenges, such as digital procurement objects and the information...     

Practice Makes Better: Using Immersive Cases to Improve Student Performance on Day 1 of the Common Final Examination*

In the context of an accredited CPA program, we investigate whether an immersive case delivered over several weeks in a team-based environment in the Performance Management elective module improves student performance on Day 1 examinations and whether all students benefit equally from the immersive case. Results show that using an immersive case prior to Capstone 1 significantly improves student performance on practice Day 1 examinations and Day 1 of the Common Final Examination (CFE). Although high-ability students and non-English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students with co-op experience perform better regardless of whether an immersive case is used, ESL students benefit from using an immersive case when evaluating performance on Day 1 of the CFE. In addition, spending six to eight weeks preparing extensively for the CFE after graduate classes end in July seems to contribute to closing performance gaps between students. This study benefits the education process by identifying a tool that educators can use to improve performance on the CFE. It provides insights that may prove useful to CPA Canada and accredited post-secondary institutions as they revamp their programs to align with Competency Map 2.0.