Enhancing environmental information transparency through corporate social responsibility reporting regulation

This research aims to contribute to the scientific debate about the lack of interlinkages between mandatory non-financial reporting and sustainable business models. For our purposes, a counter-accounting analysis was conducted on the non-financial reports of a sample of 145 Italian firms interested by the Directive 2014/95/EU effects. Specifically, the study adopts an empirical approach to evaluate environmental information transparency, which represents one of the main critical issues concerning the non-financial declarations prepared by European Italian Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to comply with Directive 2014/95/EU. The results highlight that corporate governance and report characteristics affect environmental transparency. Furthermore, the results confirm the overall attitude to avoid the disclosure of unfavourable or unavailable environmental information through impression management strategies. Finally, the analysis underlines the opportunities for policymakers to rethink mandatory non-financial reporting to sustain the ecological transition of European PIEs.     

Atypical work: a threat to labour productivity growth? Some evidence from Italy

Various theories suggest the existence of a negative relationship between the use of atypical employment contracts and productivity growth, arguing that firms’ utilisation of atypical contracts may reduce the incentive to innovate and internal training, inducing firms to follow a ‘low-road’ to competitiveness, based upon cost-cutting strategies.

This paper aims to provide new evidence on the occurrence of these effects in the Italian economy, where changes in labour legislation from the mid-Nineties onwards, associated with an ‘institutional’ wage moderation period, have brought about a significant process of job creation, but also an appreciable slowdown in labour productivity.

This issue is investigated using a microeconomic approach, taking a rich source of microdata for firms and estimating a dynamic model for labour productivity on a pseudo-panel of firms for the period 2003-2008.

The results support the hypothesis of a negative impact of external labour flexibility on labour productivity growth at firm level, such effect proving stronger for small and medium than for large enterprises and of varying magnitude for the different atypical contracts.     

The average consumer, the unfair commercial practices directive, and the cognitive revolution

This article examines the merit of the test of the average consumer as a basis for judicial and regulatory action. In the first part, we describe the origin of the test, its application in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and its possible developments. In the second part, we discuss the theoretical grounds of the average consumer test (i.e., information and rationality), drawing upon the studies of cognitive psychology and behavioural economics concerning consumers’ behaviour. The result of our analysis is that we call into serious question the practical workability of the test of the average consumer, which requires consumers an overly demanding standard of rationality and information without dedicating much attention to the real functioning of consumer behaviour. The average consumer may be described as an interesting, anti-paternalistic and, to some extent, useful notion. It is, however, an overly simplistic concept with little correspondence with the real world of individual consumer behaviour and should be reinterpreted more flexibly, or even abandoned to mirror consumer behaviour more effectively.

Assessing social impact in the field of sustainable tourism development: Evidence from Cabo Delgado (MZ)

ABSTRACT

Assessing the social impact of tourism-related activities is of paramount importance to promoting sustainable development. The present study aimed to assess the social impact of a project in Cabo Delgado (MZ), designed to increase local community residents’ employability in the emerging tourism sector through the delivery of vocational training programmes, utilising a multi-phase and mixed-method design. The study comprised three different phases (before, during, and after the intervention) and took into account the perspective of a variety of stakeholders. Programmes were perceived to be effective by local operators in the tourism sector and trainees, as they enhanced their living conditions and increased their employability. International operators and tourists, however, had not yet perceived their effectiveness. This study offers a methodological framework for social impact assessment by performing a programme evaluation as an integral part of the intervention itself. This methodology can be extended to other non-tourism related contexts.     

Diversity challenge: An integrated process to bridge the ‘implementation gap’

At this time of crisis, companies rediscover the key role people play in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Taking into account the heterogeneity of their workforces, boards of directors and managers alike face the challenge of understanding how to manage diversities such that the benefits outweigh the costs. This article argues that companies can deal with this challenge by adopting an integrated process of change across strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Indeed, people's differences and diversity management need to be introduced and integrated within company values and vision (strategic level). This vision has to be translated into strategies, a specific policy, and its associated practices to promote the development of synergic cultural and organizational changes that affect the whole company (tactical level). Finally, this policy and its associated practices need to be turned into real actions (operational level). Herein, we propose and discuss an integrated process to implement diversity management in a detailed and sufficiently flexible way such that it can be personalized and adapted to a specific organization. From a managerial standpoint, the proposed model could be a guide for bridging the ‘implementation gap’ of diversity management.     

Inefficient entry order in preemption games

In a preemption game, players decide when to take an irreversible action. Delaying the action exogenously increases payoffs, but there is an early mover advantage. Riordan (1992) shows that in a preemption game with two asymmetric players, players act in decreasing order of efficiency. This provides a microfoundation to the assumption that entry in a market occurs in the order of profitability, commonly used in the empirical analysis of market entry. We provide a counterexample showing that with more than two players this intuitive result can be reversed. We present a preemption game of entry into a new market. The potential entrants are three asymmetric firms: one “efficient” firm with high post-entry profits, and two “inefficient firms”. We show that the set of parameters such that the equilibrium entry order does not reflect the efficiency ranking is nonempty, and analyse which changes in post-entry profits preserve this entry order.     

A Reduction in Social Security Contributions: Which Alternatives for Financing Coverage?

This paper uses the INTIMO model of the Italian economy to analyze the economic impacts of a reduction in social security contributions. This manoeuvre is intended to reduce the tax wedge on labour cost. There is a wide choice of ways to neutralize the revenue effects of a lower tax yield, because several of the existing taxes could be increased and new ones could be introduced. In this study, alternative financing coverages are developed and applied in the model. The results of the study show that substituting different taxes for social security contributions affects the cost of production, and impacts vary with industries. A reduction in contributions compensated for by an increase in value-added tax produces the best results in terms of short-term economic indicators, but the improvement in environmental conditions—not analyzed in this study—achieved by energy taxes could be a very important target and could justify the recourse to this tool.     

Locus of control and individual learning: the moderating role of interactional justice

Organizations are increasingly investing in training programs for building managerial skills, with a special focus on employees considered ‘talents’ who must be prepared to cover strategic roles within the organization. One of the main goals of such programs is to develop participants' learning in order to tap their potential in a short time frame, ultimately to gain competitive advantage. However, participant learning is a complex process that can be hindered by different elements related to the characteristics of individuals and the context in which they act. In our research, we conducted a field study to analyze how the individual trait of locus of control (LOC) may negatively affect learning. Moreover, our study indicates that the contextual characteristic of interactional justice mitigates the negative effect of LOC on individual learning. We provide theoretical contributions and suggestions for managers in the light of our results.     

Trade,competitiveness and investment: an empirical assessment

ABSTRACT

The Eurozone crisis has exposed several weaknesses of the European Monetary Union economies. This paper aims to assess the impact on external competitiveness of an expansionary capital stock policy that could contribute to reduce the trade balance asymmetries within the EU and help European exporters to recover their competitive role in international markets. A policy action to increase capital stock accumulation through investment in selected European countries could generate a double dividend: increasing both price and nonprice competitiveness, so stimulating their competitive position as exporters, and consolidating the growth path of EU economy. The analysis employs a bilateral trade model built at INFORUM with several distinguishing characteristics: a comprehensive bilateral data set, econometric estimation of key parameters, and emphasis on sectoral details. Our findings show that a capital stock increase is effective in narrowing trade imbalances within EU. Heterogeneous effects are estimated for commodities in China and the US.     

Managing integrators where integration matters: insights from symbolic industries

Recently, companies have been faced with strong need for integration in order to deal with the trade-offs of the current competitive environments – quick response and customization, technical functionality and stylistic appeal, low cost and top quality. This need has led to the introduction of different integrating positions. Although these positions already exist within the firm, in recent years they have become strategic and therefore have to be carefully managed. The relevance and the management of integrators are particularly evident in the symbolic industries, where the need to combine the symbolic and the functional facets of products and services has become increasingly critical for companies to succeed. We provide evidence based on four case studies conducted in the European fashion industry in order to build an original framework for the effectiveness of the integrators and to highlight the relevance of HRM practices in dealing with these positions.