Development and validation of the Remote Working Benefits & Disadvantages scale

The changes that are constantly occurring in the labour sector have led organisations and companies to move towards digital transformation. This process was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and  conducted to a massive recourse to the practice of remote working, which in this study is understood as the term for the way of performing work outside the usual workplace and with the support of ICT. Currently, there are no flexible scales in the literature that allow measuring the benefits and disadvantages of remote working with a single instrument. Thus, the distinction between the positive and negative consequences of working remotely, substantiated by a solid literature, provides a framework for a systematical understanding of the issue. The aim of the present study is to develop and validate a scale on remote working benefits and disadvantages (RW-B&D scale). For this end, a preliminary Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with 304 participants, a tailored EFA with a sample of 301 workers and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with 677 workers were conducted. Participants were all Italian employees who worked remotely during the period of the COVID-19 health emergency. Data were collected between October 2020 and April 2021. The psychometric robustness of the model was assessed through bootstrap validation (5000 resamples), fit indices testing and measurement of factorial invariance. The statistical analyses demonstrated the bifactorial nature of the scale, supporting the research hypothesis. The model showed good fit indices, bootstrap validation reported statistically significant saturations, good reliability indices, and convergent and discriminant validity. Measurement invariance was tested for gender and organisational sector. The results suggested that the novel scale facilitates the quantitative measurement of the benefits and disadvantages associated with remote working in empirical terms. For this reason, it could be a streamlined and psychometrically valid instrument to identify the potential difficulties arising from remote working and, at the same time, the positive aspects that can be implemented to improve organisational well-being.

     

Skills,sunspots and cycles

This paper explores the ability of a class of one-sector, multi-input models to generate indeterminate equilibrium paths, and endogenous fluctuations, without relying on factors’ hoarding. The model presents a novel theoretical economic mechanism that supports sunspot-driven expansions without requiring upward sloping labor demand schedules. Its distinctive characteristic is that the skill composition of aggregate labor demand drives expansionary i.i.d. demand shocks. Next, the model explains the labor market dynamics from the supply side, while endogenizing the capital productivity response to changes in the aggregate labor demand composition. Last but not least, it is worth to mention that the model presents an effective shock propagation mechanism that operates into the labor market and across labor market segments through the cross elasticities of equilibrium labor demand and supplies.      

Resource interaction in inter-organizational networks: Foundations, comparison, and a research agenda

The focus of this article is on discussing the foundations, conceptual development, and implications of resource interaction in inter-organizational networks. The article conceptualizes and classifies resources before discussing how resource interfaces enable to utilize, manage, and change resources. In doing so it provides a set of basic principles as to how resources interact at a network level, or how firms combine, develop, mobilize, and manage resources over time. This is in strong contrast to a focus on the acquisition, accumulation, and exchange of resources by the firm. The article further provides a comparison with two other research streams, the Resource-Based view (RBV) and the Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic), in order to better position this perspective on inter-organizational resource interaction. It concludes by discussing an agenda for further research.     

Collaboration for innovation and project failure. A dynamic analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis that there is a complex and bidirectional relation between collaboration and failure in innovation projects. On the one hand, collaboration in innovative activities may increase the likelihood of project failure. At the same time, the failure in innovation projects may induce the firm to collaborate in order to overcome the problems that determined the failure of innovation projects (induced collaboration). Up to now, we are not aware about the existence of any empirical paper analysing the interaction between these two mechanisms. This paper aims at filling this gap by providing a motivation for the induced collaboration and testing its empirical relevance in a dynamic framework. The empirical analysis is carried out by using two consecutive German Community Innovation Surveys referring to the period 2006–2010. The empirical results support the hypothesis of a bidirectional causal relationship between collaboration and failure.     

Patience and time consistency in collective decisions

We present experimental evidence regarding individual and group decisions over time. Static and longitudinal methods are combined to test four conditions on time preferences: impatience, stationarity, age independence, and dynamic consistency. Decision making in groups should favor coordination via communication about voting intentions. We find that individuals are neither patient nor consistent, that groups are both patient and highly consistent, and that information exchange between participants helps groups converge to stable decisions. Finally we provide additional evidence showing that our results are driven by the specific role of groups and not by either repeated choices or individual preferences when choosing for other subjects.     

DIRECTED GRAPH THEORY AND THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF INNOVATION

This article applies digraph theory to the theory of technological regimes. The first part of the paper identifies a number of links between the evolutionary approach and a particular version of the neoclassical approach to the economic analysis of technological change. Both these approaches are shown to take the body of presently-available technological knowledge as a quantifiable magnitude allowing firms varying in strategy, structure and core capabilities to explore a range of feasible alternatives within the frontiers imposed by such knowledge. The second part of the paper therefore considers technological knowledge to be a cognitive empirical structure which can be better defined and calculated by using the theorems of digraph theory.     

Online Reputation Monitoring: An Exploratory Study on Italian Hotel Managers’ Practices

This study aims to understand current Italian hotel managers’ practices in monitoring online reviews included on travel websites and online travel agencies. Results obtained by a web survey indicate what hotel managers monitor (rating, rankings, guest comments regarding different service elements) and managers’ orientation in replying to customer reviews. Findings may support online reputation management tools providers and consulting firms by highlighting the degree of hoteliers’ interest in UGC monitoring and providing insights on possible factors that differentiate current management practices and should be considered in order to offer technical solutions coherent with the distinctiveness of Italian context.     

Beyond CAPM: estimating the cost of equity considering idiosyncratic risks

The present study proposes a new evaluation approach aimed at estimating the cost of equity through standardized models which consider an innovative set of firm-specific information on the main unsystematic risks which are typical of any business. Our objective is extending the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) by defining a standard formula for quantifying the premium for certain idiosyncratic risks as a function of a new set of firm-specific quantitative information. We define two econometric models, for listed and non-listed firms respectively, which consider five idiosyncratic risk factors: firm size, value factor, operating risks, financial structure and stock market price volatility. The models were tested on a sample of European non-financial companies. The empirical results show that while the CAPM systematically underestimates the cost of equity, the proposed models correctly estimate its expected value; furthermore, they show a slight improvement also in terms of estimates’ volatility. Due to their efficacy and ease of use, the proposed models represent a valid practical tool for investors, analysts and professional evaluators. This work contributes to the existing literature by proposing a typologically innovative extension of the CAPM set of explanatory variables, defining and testing new models for the estimation of the unsystematic risks’ spread of the cost of equity based on an original set of firm-specific accounting and market information.     

Pre-adoption market reaction to IFRS 9: A cross-country event-study

We are the first to examine the market reaction to 13 announcement dates related to IFRS 9 for over 5400 European listed firms. We find an overall positive reaction to the introduction of IFRS 9. The regulation is particularly beneficial to shareholders of firms in countries with weaker rule of law and a smaller divergence between local GAAP and IAS 39. Bootstrap simulations rule out the possibility that sampling error or data mining are driving our findings. Our main findings are also robust to confounding events and the extent of the media coverage for each event. These results suggest that investors perceive the new regulation as shareholder-wealth enhancing and support the view that stronger comparability across accounting standards of European firms is beneficial to international investors and outweighs the costs of poorer firm-specific information.     

Feasible taxation in advanced democracies

One usually considers tax pressure as the result of the policymakers’ efforts to increase public expenditure, while populism is resorted to in order to alleviate tensions among the taxpayers. This paper takes a different view. It assumes that populism is exogenous in the short run and defines the tolerable degree of tax pressure required to bring about redistribution; however, taxpayers also resent disappointing economic performances and low-quality public expenditure. Within this context, therefore, policymakers try to find a compromise between their desire to engage in rent-seeking and their electoral ambitions. This paper shows under which circumstances compromise is obtained, how tensions arise, and what outcomes the taxpayers’ reactions may generate.