Customer co-creation projects and social media: The case of Barilla of Italy

This article investigates a social media-enabled, customer co-creation project that employs front-end innovation (FEI) at a well-known, large-scale food manufacturer. It sheds light on the role of social media technology in transforming the characteristics of FEI in terms of boundaries and knowledge distance. What type of exploratory or exploitative innovation ideas does a project of this sort enable? How did the project evolve? What lessons can be learned from this project? A longitudinal case study of Barilla was carried out through two rounds of interviews with marketing, business development and innovation, and digital communication managers. The evidence gathered highlights the emergent evolution of this customer co-creation project from an initial stage of idea exploitation to a more complex and fruitful stage in which both exploitation and exploration were simultaneously accomplished.     

The firm,the platform and the customer: A “double mangle” interpretation of social media for innovation

The aim of this article was to explore the relationship between human actors and technology in the context of a social media platform, developed by a leading Italian firm in the food industry, and created to keep in contact with its customers, while gathering innovative ideas from them.In order to address these issues, we adopt a theoretical approach that is deeply rooted in Pickering's “mangle” theory, and Jones' subsequent metaphor of “double dance of agency” i.e. human and material agencies. A longitudinal case study has been developed with two rounds of interviews with marketing and R&D managers. A total of 8 recorded interviews, for 22 h overall.We examined conditions in the ongoing functioning of the platform, and considered how the website's dynamic materiality configures and reconfigures the practices and possibilities of different modes of engagement by multiple users (i.e. firm employees and customers) and vice versa. Specifically, dealing with the case of a social media platform developed by a firm to gain clearly defined organizational ends, the entanglement is considered to be double. One entanglement is between the human agency of customers and the material agency of the social media platform. The other is between the human agency of the firm and the material agency of the social media platform, including all actions that human agents (i.e. firm employees) undertake in seeking to channel material agency and shape actions of other human agents, i.e. customers.     

Measuring differences in economic standard of living between immigrant communities in Italy

Measuring differences in the economic standard of living of between natives and other ethnic groups can inform us about the relative disadvantages and inequalities within Italian society. Despite the importance of this question, the measurement of this gap is not an easy task because, when using the usual design-based approach to survey sampling inference, the available micro-data lack sufficient sample size for the majority of immigrant communities needed to obtain reliable estimates. In this paper, we show that small area estimation (SAE) techniques can be applied in a fruitful way to avoid this issue. In particular, we use an approach based on M-quantile regression for estimating the economic standard of living in each community in Italy. Our findings highlight economic disparities between natives and other ethnic groups and suggest the need to adopt specific policies that target the most vulnerable immigrant communities and are designed to improve their economic standard of living.     

On Tail Value-at-Risk for sums of non-independent random variables with a generalized Pareto distribution

Recently in actuarial literature several authors have derived lower and upper bounds in the sense of convex order for sums of random variables with given marginal distributions and unknown dependency structure. In this paper, we derive convex bounds for sums of non-independent and identically distributed random variables when marginal distributions are mixture models. In particular, we examine some well-known risk measures and we find approximations for Tail Value-at-Risk of the sums considered when marginal distributions are generalized Pareto distributions. By numerical examples we illustrate the goodness of the presented approximations.      

Assessing the Impact of Direct Payments Convergence on Farm Income Inequality: The Case of Italian Farms

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of the convergence process of direct payments (DPs) on farm income inequality. The analysis uses the Gini coefficient concept and its decomposition on the FADN Italian sample in 2014 and 2019 to assess the impact of the DPs reform in Italy. Results of the analysis show that a marginal increase in direct payments will reduce income concentration. However, a shift of resources toward mountain areas could occur. The results of the analysis have some policy implications regarding the application of the convergence mechanism of the CAP in Italy: in fact, the convergence process leads to a redistribution of resources in favour of mountain areas. These results could feed the debate on the future of CAP direct payments after 2020, when the cut or, at least, the reduction of DPs could increase income concentration.     

Exploring resource procurement for community-based event organization in social enterprises: evidence from Piedmont,Italy

ABSTRACT

This research contribution aims to shed light on the key role of social tourism entrepreneurship in community event management through the combination of innovative strategies for resource procurement. An exploratory qualitative case study was undertaken with 67 social tourism enterprises in Piedmont, Italy. The analysis shows that these social tourism enterprises have specific resource procurement strategies for community-based events. A business model emerges where the fundamental resource mobilization processes are based on three strategic approaches: (a) stakeholder participation and partnership; (b) sharing ideas, materials and knowledge; (c) capturing dispersed resources and assets from the local community. The identified variables provide a new perspective for the study of resource procurement in community event management.     

Environmental sustainability in fashion supply chains: An exploratory case based research

In recent years, both researchers and practitioners have devoted attention to environmental sustainability issues in the fashion industry, but, despite the topic's relevance, a structured analysis of the problem is missing.This paper presents the results of exploratory case-based research aimed at identifying three factors: the drivers that push companies to adopt “green” practices, the different practices that can be used to improve environmental sustainability, and the environmental KPIs measured by fashion companies. Results include a comparison of two approaches pursued by established international companies with green-positioned brands with the efforts of small firms that have adopted alternative supply chain models.     

Stakeholder pressures,EMS implementation,and green innovation in MNC overseas subsidiaries

In this paper, we address the issue of green innovation by the overseas subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs). Drawing upon stakeholder theory and institutional theory, we propose a conceptual model to explain how stakeholder pressures in host countries prompt MNC subsidiaries to undertake green product and process innovations. Our findings indicate that MNC subsidiaries need to meet market stakeholders’ pressures in order to achieve social legitimacy in host countries, and that the implementation of formal environmental management systems (EMS) is an important mechanism translating these pressures into green innovation initiatives. Furthermore, we find that the positive relationship between market stakeholder pressures and EMS implementation is reinforced by global ‘green’ institutional pressures in the different host countries.