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In their effort to rebuild the society of the host-nation, military organizations depend on collaboration and communication with other international contingents and the local population. Language understanding in this regard is of eminent importance. Linguistic skills and the intervention of interpreters could contribute to the inter-communicational process, and hence positively affect the general effectiveness of the mission as a whole. In this article theoretical concepts and notions are illustrated with empirical observations from everyday military practice during peace-support operations. The article concludes with avenues for future research.

The armed forces and the societies they come from, and/or work in are related to one another in a multitude of ways (for the following see Kümmel, 2002). An adequate theoretical framework to capture the relationship between what may be termed the military world and what may be termed the world out there is offered by the systems theory as, for example, put forward in Martin Edmonds’ Armed Services and Society (Edmonds, 1990: especially 113f.). In this vein, the armed services can be conceived as a system that is distinct from its environment and is in its interacting and interdependent component parts operating on specific systems logic. Thus the system (or rather the sub-system) of the armed forces can be analyzed in terms of its relationship with its environment and with other (sub-)systems that are working and operating in this environment. One may distinguish six – to be sure: interdependent and interpenetrated – dimensions to cover the richness of civil–military relations.¹ These are: economy, finances, technology, culture, society, and politics. But the complexity of the theoretical framework has to be advanced even further. Two additional points have to be dealt with. One is that the environment of the military the world out there falls into two different spheres; a national and an international one implying that these very six dimensions have to be seen in a national/domestic as well as in an international context. The second and last point is that these various dimensions of relations between the military and society look quite different depending on the point in time they are looked upon. In other words, the time factor has to be included into the analysis. According to the scheme resulting from this tableau, research issues can be grouped. The following table gives some examples for research topics that fall into the various categories and illustrate that the study of relations between the military and the society is an interdisciplinary undertaking (Table 1).

In this chapter, we focus on the processes of communication during peace missions in far-away countries, where local people in general do not master Western languages such as English and French. Afghanistan is such a country where the international community conducts large-scale peace operations that bring along many situations in which the military needs to talk to local people. In such situations, interpreters mastering the local languages (Darsi and Pasthtu) are needed. In our study, we focus on their work, how they think they should fulfil their task, and their relation between the military who hire them and the local people to which they in fact belong. This in-between position makes them strangers in their own country. Goffman's work on strategic interaction, the management of face and embarrassment as well as interaction rituals in general constitute the theoretical backbone of this study.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By adopting network analytic techniques, this paper aims to examine interlocking directorates among firms operating in the hospitality services sector in seven major Italian tourism destinations.

The authors collected information for all the hotel corporations whose headquarters are located in the seven top Italian destinations: Florence, Milan, Naples, Rimini, Rome, Turin and Venice. Data come from the Analisi Informatizzata delle Aziende Italiane database by Bureau Van Dijk and were used to build a network where the nodes are board members (people) and corporations (hotels) and the links represent the membership of individuals in the boards. From this, with a one-mode projection, the authors obtain two networks: people and corporations. The overall networks’ structures are analysed by assessing their connectivity characteristics.

The findings indicate a relatively low number of interlocks that signals a high degree of fragmentation, showing that the interconnections (both within and between destinations) are scarce. This suggests that in absence of formalized cooperation arrangements, corporations might collaborate informally.

This work extends previous research on complexity in business settings, focusing specifically on service companies whose output depends on multiple interactions and helps clarifying coopetition practices of hospitality service firms. Policymaking perspectives are discussed as well as managerial viewpoints.

Not many studies of the interlocking directorates in the hospitality domain exist. This paper uses network analysis for a better understanding of the cooperative practices and the formal social structures of the Italian hospitality industry and derives a series of implications important for both researchers and practitioners while also looking at potential future studies.

This research investigates the effect of accessibility to points of tourist interest (buffer) and direct and indirect spatial spillover effects of agglomeration economies on tourism industry revenues in Spain.

Data were collected from the Bureau van Dijk's (BvD) Orbis global database. The data were analysed using a spatial econometric model and the Cobb–Douglas production function.

This study reveals that hotels located inside the buffer zone of points of tourist interest achieve better economic outcomes than hotels located outside the buffer. Furthermore, the results show that there is a direct and indirect spatial spillover effect in the hotel industry.

The results provide valuable information for identifying areas where the agglomeration of hotels will produce a spillover effect on hotel revenue and the area of influence of location characteristics. This information is relevant for hotels already established in a destination or when seeking a location for a new hotel.

The results of this study can help city planners in influencing the distribution of hotels to fit desired patterns and improve an area's spatial beauty.

The paper provides insights into how investment, structural characteristics, reputation and location affect hotel revenue.

Performance management can play an important role in the implementation of strategic change, by aligning employees’ mindsets and behavior with organizational goals. However, the ways in which employees react to change efforts aided by performance management practices are far from straight-forward. In this chapter, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding employees’ reactions to strategic change as a consequence of their occupational identities and their performance management outcome. We further apply the framework to an empirical study of a strategic change initiative in a school organization that was supported by a new performance management practice. We show how variations in perceived identity threat translate into four distinct patterns of emotional and behavioral reactions, where only one represents whole-hearted change acceptance. The study contributes to our understanding of individual- and group-level heterogeneity in reactions to strategic change, and also to a more nuanced conception of identity threat.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the managerial practices that companies can implement in order to design a circular economy business model and how companies can create and capture value from a circular economy business model.

The paper adopts a single case study methodology with semi-structured interviews and company, supplier, and manufacturing site visits, conducted in a small-to-medium-size Italian company operating in the office supply industry.

The theoretical setting maps a set of managerial practices for a circular economy business model and sets the research gaps and questions in a research framework designed along three main dimensions: value network, customer value proposition and interface, and managerial commitment. Then, through an empirical analysis, the findings reveal that the proposed dimensions are interdependent and reinforce each other. Moreover, the managerial commitment as moderating factor between the value network and the customer value proposition and interface dimensions is identified as essential for reaching the intended goals of circular economy business models.

This study maximizes the depth of the phenomenon under investigation by leveraging a single case study methodology, which ideally helps in a theory-testing approach as in the present case. Future research opportunities could be found in qualitative and quantitative studies to increase the generalizability of the findings of this paper.

The paper presents a set of relevant managerial practices for circular economy business models that can be used by managers who have the will to embrace in practice circular economy principles to support the design, change, or upgrade of the business model of companies within which they operate.

An interdisciplinary approach that integrates the research streams of circular economy, social psychology, organizational behavior, and business model design has been pursued to test the theoretical setting and the research framework for circular economy business models in a real-world context.

The aim of this paper is to improve the understanding of strategies for how established companies can respond to disruptive innovation, handle increasing complexity, facilitate entrepreneurial culture and processes and successfully manage organizational ambidexterity.

A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted to explore successful practices of innovation ambidexterity (IA) and their organizational design, entrepreneurial culture and mindset, processes and leadership. Two internationally established firms that have launched and established IA programs provided deep insight, revealing their strategy and learning on the path toward effective IA.

The findings show that accepting and managing the inherent complexity increases within an ambidextrous organization strategy is a decisive factor in achieving effective IA. As a result, segmenting small organizational units and granting them extensive autonomy is proposed for managing the complexity of an organization while increasing its effectiveness. Furthermore, it is shown that this helps foster entrepreneurial culture, mindsets and processes as additional mediators for achieving effective IA. Coaching, empowerment and trust were identified as key factors of ambidextrous leadership values that encourage entrepreneurial behavior and decision-making.

To the best of the authors knowledge the first study connecting the research fields of complexity management, organizational ambidexterity theory and entrepreneurial culture while applying the fundamentals of systems theory to propose a practical management framework for successfully responding to disruptive innovation.