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1 – 10 of 495Marco Formentini, ManMohan S. Sodhi and Christopher S. Tang
We investigate the innovative supply chain contracts developed and implemented by Barilla, the leading Italian pasta company, in sourcing high-quality durum wheat from farmers in…
Abstract
Purpose
We investigate the innovative supply chain contracts developed and implemented by Barilla, the leading Italian pasta company, in sourcing high-quality durum wheat from farmers in Northern Italy in the Emilia Romagna region.
Methodology/approach
Using case study techniques to gather information, we captured the evolution of the supply chain contracts adopted by Barilla. We gained information mainly through semi-structured interviews with Barilla’s managers, co-op and consortium managers representing farmers, Barilla’s quantitative data related to contracts’ elements and structure, preliminary experimental results, agri-business magazines, industry reports, and academic literature.
Findings
These contracts helped the company improve not only its long-term profits and strategic objectives such as supply security, but also the farmers’ income as well as environmental sustainability, thus providing triple bottom line benefits.
Originality/value
We investigate how Barilla and its suppliers – with the support of additional stakeholders, such as regional institutions – combine in their innovative contracts fixed and market-based prices as well as quality and sustainability-based premiums for desired triple bottom line benefits.
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Lorenzo Pelizza, Ursula Zambelli, Enrico Rossi, Germana Verdoliva, Davide Maestri, Ilaria De Amicis, Cecilia Paraggio, Amir Zaimovic, Bruno Veneri, Beatrice Urbani, Diana Gran Dall'Olio, Adriana Adriani, Stefania Cutrino, Silvia Bertoli, Giuseppina Paulillo and Pietro Pellegrini
Mental health interventions for Italian prisoners with mental disorders remain a problematic issue, despite radical changes in general psychiatric care and a 2008 major government…
Abstract
Purpose
Mental health interventions for Italian prisoners with mental disorders remain a problematic issue, despite radical changes in general psychiatric care and a 2008 major government reform transferring mental health care in prison to the National Health Service. The aim of this study is to describe the mental health intervention model implemented since January 2020 for prisoners allocated in the Parma Penitentiary Institutes (PPI). This approach is specifically based on specialized, “person-centered” and “person-tailored” therapeutic-rehabilitation plans in line with psychiatric treatments usually provided in community mental health-care centers of the Parma Department of Mental Health.
Design/methodology/approach
All the processes and procedures included in the PPI intervention model were first carefully illustrated, paying special attention to the service for newly admitted prisoners and each typology of specialized therapeutic-rehabilitation treatment potentially provided. Additionally, a preliminary descriptive process analysis of the first six months of clinical activity was also performed.
Findings
Since January 2020, 178 individuals entered the PPI service for newly admitted prisoners. In total, 83 (46.7%) of them were engaged in the services of the PPI mental health-care team (35 with pathological addiction and 48 with mental disorders): 56 prisoners were offered an integrated mental health intervention and 27 exclusively an individual psychological or psychiatric treatment.
Originality/value
The results support the potential applicability of an integrated mental health intervention in prison, planning a person-tailored rehabilitation in close collaboration with the prisoners, their families and the local mental health/social services.
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– Demonstrates the importance of family values in employment policies at Italian food group Ponti's.
Abstract
Purpose
Demonstrates the importance of family values in employment policies at Italian food group Ponti's.
Design/methodology/approach
Looks at the firm's recruitment, training and reward policies and provides the comments of employees who work there.
Findings
Highlights the importance of recruiting from within to maintaining the organizational culture and observes that a number of employees have been with “the family” for more than 30 years.
Practical implications
Reveals that Ponti's offers its employees not only restaurant-based and highly practical training followed by targeted courses but also the chance to visit the area of Italy from which the founding family originates.
Social implications
Explains the policies – including promotion from within – that are helping one business in the volatile catering sector to keeping its employees longer than the average.
Originality/value
Provides examples of individual employees who have worked their way up the company hierarchy.
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Keywords
In the last two decades, a new form of organization has progressively become predominant on many global markets: networks. Very few worker co-operatives have adopted such a…
Abstract
In the last two decades, a new form of organization has progressively become predominant on many global markets: networks. Very few worker co-operatives have adopted such a pattern though, despite the fact that, as the theoretical literature shows, the advantages of network industrial structures are numerous and networking can be considered a necessity in the context of globalization. After introducing a new framework for analyzing networks, we argue that combining several dimensions of integration has been an important factor of efficiency in three case studies: Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa, the industrial districts of Emilia-Romagna, and Scop Entreprises.
Stefania Testa, Thaer Atawna, Gino Baldi and Silvano Cincotti
This paper aims at explaining variances in the contribution of Islamic crowdfunding platforms (ICFPs) to sustainable development (SD), by adopting an institutional logic…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims at explaining variances in the contribution of Islamic crowdfunding platforms (ICFPs) to sustainable development (SD), by adopting an institutional logic perspective (ILP). ICFPs represent a dual institutional overlap between two logics (the Western-mainstream and the Islamic logic) which have an impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR) interpretations, practices, and decisions and whose conflicts are mitigated by choosing different resolution strategies. The authors aim at showing that this choice affects SD differently.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop a conceptual typology through the following steps: (1) choice of variables and identification of corresponding variable domains, through literature review. Variables chosen are the elemental CSR dimensions related to various social and environmental corporate responsibilities to whom diverse meaning and emphasis are given under the Western-mainstream and Islamic logics. (2) Identification of three distinct ideal types of ICFPs, building on different resolution strategies to mitigate conflicts between logics; (3) development, for each ideal type, of a set of implications related to SD; (4) implementation of a first test aiming at assigning real cases to each ideal type.
Findings
The authors identify Western-mimicking (platforms adopting as resolution strategy decoupling or compartmentalizing strategies), Islamic-driven (platforms focusing on one prevailing logic) and Syncretism-inspired (platforms adopting hybridizing practices) ideal-types.
Originality/value
It is the first paper suggesting ILP to explain variances in crowdfunding platforms' role in addressing SD. It focuses on a specific type of CF platforms till now neglected.
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Roberta Troisi and Gaetano Alfano
This paper analyses emergency management in two regions of Italy – Emilia-Romagna and Veneto – in order (1) to understand whether they impact on the spread of local coronavirus…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyses emergency management in two regions of Italy – Emilia-Romagna and Veneto – in order (1) to understand whether they impact on the spread of local coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) contagion and (2) evaluate which strategy works best.
Design/methodology/approach
A three-step method was developed consisting of (1) a regional incidence curve analysis; (2) a descriptive statistical analysis of the respective operational measures related to the COVID-19 curve stages; and (3) a dynamic Structural Equation Model.
Findings
The results show the effects of the models during the various stages of the local contagion, focussing both on the two individual regions and a comparison of the way they responded.
Practical implications
Three theoretical implications are highlighted: (1) Better results are not necessarily the outcome of increased expenditure; (2) The overall rigidity they both show does not work; (3) The decision to centralize was, to some extent, effective for both regions.
Originality/value
The article empirically tests the effectiveness of emergency management in tackling a single event. Instead of the widely-used normative approach, the authors adopted a descriptive one, which is not frequently discussed in the emergency management literature.
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Keywords
Regional elections in Italy.
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-DB249789
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
Maria Giovanna Bosco and Elisa Valeriani
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate if, given personal, supply-related features, and labour demand-related variables, there is a difference in the share of women finding more…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate if, given personal, supply-related features, and labour demand-related variables, there is a difference in the share of women finding more stable jobs with respect to men, in an eight-year time span.
Design/methodology/approach
Fragmentation leads to a lower probability of transitioning into more certain, full-time work positions. The authors analyse a rich cohort of dependent workers in Emilia-Romagna to investigate whether part-time jobs lead to full-time jobs in a “stepping-stone” fashion and whether this happens with the same probability for men and women. The focus is on the cost of part-time jobs rather than the contrast between permanent and temporary jobs, as often observed in the literature. The authors also evaluate the transition between part-time job formulae and open-ended work arrangements to determine whether women's transition to full-fledged, stable work positions is slightly rarer than their male counterparts. Even if the authors allow for the fact that part-time contracts can be a choice and not an obligation, these contracts generate more flexibility in managing the equilibrium between private and work life and create more uncertainty than full-time contracts because of the fragmentation associated with these arrangements.
Findings
The authors find that women have a more fragmented working career than men, in that they hold more contracts than men in the same time span; moreover, the authors find that part-time jobs act more as bottlenecks for women than for men.
Originality/value
The authors use a large administrative dataset with over 600,000 workers observed in the 2008–2015 time span, in Emilia Romagna, Italy. The authors can disentangle the number of contracts per worker and observe individual, anonymise personal features, that the authors consider in the authors' propensity score estimate. The authors ran a robustness check of the PSM estimates through coarsened exact matching (CEM).
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Marco Lomuscio, Ermanno Celeste Tortia and Andrea Cori
In Italy, worker cooperatives (WCs), whose workers hold major control rights over collectively-owned assets, are the leading vehicle for the promotion and development of employee…
Abstract
Purpose
In Italy, worker cooperatives (WCs), whose workers hold major control rights over collectively-owned assets, are the leading vehicle for the promotion and development of employee ownership. Worker cooperatives are present in all regions and in most economic sectors, employing about 506,000 workers and generating a turnover of about €22 bn. Despite their history and diffusion, the high prevalence of WCs in Italy is under-researched and -thematised and requires new research.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper leverages unpublished primary and secondary data from Centro Studi Legacoop databank, the Aida-Bureau Van Dijk databank and the Cooperative Registry of the Ministry of Economic Development (CRMED) to explain the spread of WCs in Italy.
Findings
This paper reveals descriptive statistics of WCs and investigates their distribution across economic sectors and regions, their economic and financial performance and gives an overview of the relevant legislation. The paper indicates that older small- and medium-sized cooperatives located in central and north-eastern Italy perform best economically. However, in recent years, an increasing number of young cooperatives has emerged in South Italy thanks to favourable legislation, cooperative finance and the diffusion of cooperative know-how. Limitations to such results are reported in the conclusions.
Originality/value
The paper sheds light on past and recent development trends of WCs in Italy, highlights their growth in South Italy and revitalises the debate on the drivers, structures and rationales of employee-owned enterprises in Italy. Findings generate implications for research and practice. Given the tendency of WCs to better protect jobs than investor-owned enterprises, the spread of these enterprises may help workers find better and more stable jobs, counter-cyclically mitigating the dangerous effects of macro- and meso-economic fluctuations and instability.
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Lisa Dorigatti, Anna Mori and Stefano Neri
The paper examines the different trajectories of externalisation and the development of different kinds of welfare mix in three different sub-sectors of socio-educational…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper examines the different trajectories of externalisation and the development of different kinds of welfare mix in three different sub-sectors of socio-educational services: long-term care for the elderly, early childhood services and kindergartens. By integrating the industrial relations and comparative public administration literatures, it analyses the different rationales underpinning contracting-out decisions of Italian local governments.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a multi-method, multi-level approach: quantitative data on the provision of socio-educational services and the nature of the providers are combined with the analysis of 12 case studies of municipalities through 80 semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis.
Findings
The paper argues that differentials in labour regulation across the public/private divide and the consequent possibility to access labour markets characterised by cheaper labour and higher organisational flexibility are a key explanation in local governments' decisions to outsource. Despite labour market factors playing a prominent role, their relevance is significantly tempered by political and social factors and particularly by the strong opposition of citizens, personnel and trade unions to pure market solutions in the provision of such services. However, the centrality of these factors depends on the nature of the services: political sensibility against privatisation proved to be stronger in kindergartens, while services for the elderly were more frequently and less contentiously privatised.
Originality/value
The main contribution is the integration of the two research traditions to analyse patterns of outsourcing in the socio-educational services in Italy, showing that neither of them is able, alone, to explain the different private/public mix characterising different social and educational services.
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