Time series approaches to Italian regional convergence

This article investigates the evolution of the gap between Italian regions and Italy as a whole during the period of 1980 to 2007. We tested for the presence of the stochastic and β-convergence hypotheses using different time series approaches. The former was studied, first, for the entire sample period and then, with an exogenous instantaneous break in the series. The presence of β-convergence, instead, was estimated considering a known and an unknown trend break date model. Our results show that most of the regions do not converge in an ‘actual’ way, since they do not present a stochastic and β-convergence simultaneously.     

Nonlinear optimal control of coupled time-delayed models of economic growth

Decisions in Economics and Finance - The article proposes a novel nonlinear optimal control method for the dynamics of coupled time-delayed models of economic growth. Distributed and interacting...     

Corporate communication management: A framework based on decision-making with reference to communication resources

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for corporate communication management, based on the creation and utilisation of communication resources. The aim is to address a gap in the literature in that to date, communication tools have been identified as communication resources in very few studies, nor have communication decisions been linked to the creation and use of such resources. The paper draws on some basic resource-based view assumptions to identify firm-specific communication resources. The study also draws on Parsons' sociological approach with reference to the classification of organisational decisions (policy, allocation and coordination) and contextualises this approach to the decision-making within corporate communication function/department. The framework also takes into account some elements of the postmodernism. According to this tendency in contemporary culture, internal and external stakeholders play a proactive role in the creation and utilisation of communication resources. The study contributes to the development of corporate communication as an autonomous area of management.     

IMC in digitally-empowering contexts: the emerging role of negotiated brands

In current digitally-empowering contexts, the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) paradigm may have lost its ‘original’ customer-centric focus. Drawing on service-dominant logic, the paper examines the changes to IMC when multiple sources of consumer power emerge as central in the value creation process. This change in the focus of IMC likely enables the emergence of negotiated brands, i.e. brands that focus on a marketplace where traditional marketer-created brand value may be replaced by buyer and seller co-created value. The paper argues that this novel type of brand structure represents an appropriate managerial response to multidimensional IMC approaches. As that occurs, four key issues (community-centric orientation, emergent strategy, hybrid communication mix, reciprocity-based assessment) emerge which lead to a number of research questions in the planning and execution of marketing communications in today’s digitally-empowered contexts. All these issues clearly highlight the consumers’ contributions to brand value co-creation, by reaffirming the ‘original’ outside-in perspective of IMC.