Organizing the purchasing department for innovation

Innovation is by far one of the most important competitive priorities in the current business context. Companies increasingly rely on their supply base to support their innovation potential. As a consequence, the purchasing department might dramatically affect the firm??s innovation capability. This paper aims to investigate??using a multiple case study approach??how the organizational design of the purchasing department could determine a firm??s capability to foster and manage innovation. Seven highly innovative companies were visited and the structures of their purchasing departments were analyzed. Three different configurations for the purchasing department were identified and described.     

Linking learning with governance in networks and clusters: key issues for analysis and policy

In this paper we analyse the relationship between governance and learning in clusters and networks. In particular, we see these two key elements as interdependent, suggesting that, under particular circumstances, such interdependence may drive clusters and networks towards a dynamic development trajectory. A pure ‘governance perspective’ makes the development of any locality dependent on the system of powers which exists within the locality or across the global value chain. In parallel, a pure ‘competence-based approach’ focuses mainly on the capabilities of actors to learn and undertake activities. In contrast, we open the prospects for an interdependent relation that may change the actual competences of actors as well as the governance settings and dynamics in networks and clusters. When supported by public policies, the learning process may have the potential to modify the governance environment. Simultaneously, the learning process is intrinsically influenced by economic power, which may seriously affect the development prospects of clusters and networks. This is why an intertwined consideration of both aspects is necessary to promote specific approaches to learning and to design appropriate policies. In this paper we offer two preliminary case studies to clarify some of these dynamics: the first taken from the computers cluster in Costa Rica and the second from an Italian bio-pharmaceutical firm and its production network. The first case study refers to the software cluster that was created from scratch in Costa Rica thanks to an enlightened government policy in coordination with new local enterprises and an important foreign direct investor; while the second reflects on the ability of an individual company to create a network of relationships with large transnational companies in order to acquire new competences without falling into a subordinate position with respect to its larger partners.     

Designing business models in circular economy: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The concept of circular economy is increasingly receiving attention in different domains, including strategic management, operations management, and technology management. It requires companies to design their business model (i.e., the value network, the relationships with the supply chain partners, and the value propositions towards customers) around a new concept of sustainable development that reduces consumption of natural resources and preserves the environment. However, extant research falls short in terms of explaining how companies design their business model according to the circular economy principles. Starting from this premise, the present paper provides a systematic review of the literature on the design of business models in the context of circular economy, aiming to offer an overview of the state of research and outline a promising research agenda.     

Going Public and the Enrichment of a Supportive Network

Past research on initial public offerings suggests that the reputation of a company positively affects the success of the offering. Success is usually measured in financial terms as if the essence of the operation lay only in the short-term inflow of money. In this paper, we investigate important albeit often neglected implications of going public by combining evidence from a series of preliminary case studies taken from the results of a survey of 57 Italian initial public offerings. Evidence from our research suggests that, besides providing an important inflow of capital, going public may actually improve the reputational and social capital of a company, by increasing its visibility, prestige and perceived trustworthiness. Therefore, going public may be an important way to support entrepreneurial activity, as it may expand and reinforce the network of relationships that offer access to external resources, complementary skills and investment opportunities.     

Su di una politica di bonus

Si prende in considerazione una politica di Bonus attuata da una Compagnia di assicurazione e si studia l'andamento della perdita attesa della Compagnia al variare dell'entità del Bonus nei casi in cui:

1. la funzioneL(s), che esprime il livello minimo dell'entità dei sinistri non occultabili all'istantes, sia lineare ins;
2. la funzioneL(s) renda massima la previsione del guadagno di ogni singolo assicurato.

     

The food neophobia scale and young adults’ intention to eat insect products

In the coming years, the new EU Regulation on Novel Food is likely to facilitate the development of a niche market for insects and insect‐based ingredients in many European countries. In this research, the aim is to explore the relationship between willingness to try (WTT) and behavior of eating insects, where the independent variables are food neophobia, sensory property expectations, and previous consumption. In total, 88 Italian participants took part in the study. The food neophobia scale (FNS) was constructed using 9 of the 10 items from the original FNS, and a Structural Equation Modeling approach was used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that males are more open to trying insects than females, and food neophobia is negatively correlated with the willingness to eat insects. Findings also indicate that the first exposure to insects positively increases consumers’ sensory property expectations. Intention to try is a strong predictor of the behavior of eating insects. People who scored lower on the FNS were more likely to try (intention) and consequently eat insects (behavior). These findings enhance knowledge about factors which could lead to lower levels of negative prejudice and greater willingness to taste edible insects among Western consumers. Finally, some marketing implications are discussed, like the need of information campaigns to emphasize positive sensory attributes of edible insects to increase the WTT this unfamiliar food.     

Diversification Strategies and Corporate Coherence Evidence from Italian Leading Firms

This paper investigates the determinants of coherence and coherence change usinga sample of Italian leading firms in the period 1993–1996. Consistently with thehypotheses advanced by Teece et al. (1994), the econometric analysis highlightsthat relatedness between pairs of sectors and coherence of diversification strategiesare higher when firms are active in sectors sharing similar technological and marketingcharacteristics, and when they are positioned at different stages of the productive chain.Moreover, the findings that firms which enter the group of top 5 industry leaders aremore coherent than the average and that coherence is increasing for firms active insectors more sensitive to EU integration are consistent with the prediction that coherentfirms tend to outperform less coherent ones and that coherence is increasing in morecompetitive environments. Finally, the results show that a deepening of vertical integration strategies is good for coherence change, while an increase of diversification brings a reduction in coherence.     

Drivers of Autonomy of Public Agencies in Italy

The creation of agencies has been and still is a widespread trend in the public sector: governments in many countries often establish semi‐autonomous single‐purpose organizations to carry out a wide range of functions and tasks. The trend to autonomization is problematic as it affects public sector's governance: several bodies operate partly autonomously from the core elective government, and are sometimes loosely coupled with their ‘parent’ administration. Consequently, analysing the drivers of agencies’ autonomy is a crucial issue for public management. This paper, in the light of some major contributions in organizational science, assumes that agencies’ autonomy is influenced by factors that affect post‐delegation relationships: agencies’ structure, culture and nature of the tasks executed. The study was aimed at testing a range of hypotheses about the autonomy of public agencies, using for this purpose the so‐far not investigated case of Italy–much in the spirit of the accumulation of knowledge in an area of public management. Results do not provide any strikingly counter‐intuitive finding, but a mix of confirmations and disconfirmations of previous findings that allow a finer‐grained analysis on the determinants of agency autonomy.     

A methodology based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process for the quantitative assessment of emergency preparedness and response in road tunnels

The paper presents and discusses a methodology to judge the effectiveness of the preparedness activities in case of accidents in road tunnels by considering the system from several points of view (i.e. structural/technical, organizational/human, and contextual). Due to the different nature of the criteria involved in the assessment activity, we chose to apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology (Saaty, T.L. (2006). Fundamentals of Decision Making and Priority Theory with the Analytic Hierarchy Process, RWS Publications, Pittsburgh) that allows comparing and appraising quantitatively variables that are incommensurable and that may originate from distinct and separate areas. The paper identifies the hierarchic structure necessary to measure both the performance of the emergency response system for road tunnel accidents and the weights for assessing their relative importance. Finally, the methodology is applied to a case study on a transnational road tunnel between Italy and France to show a feasible evaluation of the sensitivity of the structure to the input variables in order to find the most valuable enhancing and improving actions.