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Many travellers are increasingly visiting destinations’ natural environments as they seek extraordinary experiences that are different from their usual lifestyles. Very often, they demand agritourism experiences in rural settings. This development has inevitably led many businesses to provide agritourism services to meet these tourists’ needs. In this light, this chapter explores the agritourism sector in Italy. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the agritourism supply in Campania. It analyses the main success factors which can affect the development of agritourism industry in the region. This contribution study is divided into three parts. The first part presents a brief introduction as well as a definition for agritourism. The second part provides an overview of this industry sector in Italy, as the researchers analyse official statistical data on this topic. In conclusion, the authors imply that there are opportunities for the growth of rural tourism in Campania.

Over the last few years, the wine industry has been undergoing a process of accelerated change, consequent to the constantly changing wine geography, both from the demand and the supply sides. This research is based on the 2011 work of Rossi et al. and aims to develop a preliminary prescriptive strategic branding framework for the Campania (Italy) wine firms.

The research focuses on branding strategies and financial performance. It is based on extensive secondary data; the research is exploratory in nature, and it is a theoretical research.

The paper achieves four main objectives: to understand the industry's local and international competitive situation; to identify the role and potentialities of branding in competitive terms; to identify the underlying factors of consumer behavior in relation to wine branding; and to develop a preliminary prescriptive strategic branding framework for the Campania wine firms, with generic application and value.

The limitations of the paper are the result of its very nature: it is a largely conceptual paper. Empirical research is therefore needed to test and validate the essentially preliminary framework developed and the (well‐based) assumptions made towards its development.

The value of the paper stems from the fact that practically no research exists on the subject and this work provides a solid and comprehensive theoretical foundation for further research to build on. Additionally, this research studies the subject but also through the identification of true underlying consumer behavior factors.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that synergy between firms and local institutions may lead to success even in an economic environment which cannot offer competitive advantages to high tech industrial clustering. However, the condition for such a complex result is convergence between cluster‐based regional development policy, the related industry national strategy and the central government preferential policy for less developed areas.

The experiences selected as case studies are the Xi'an National Civil Aerospace Base in Shaanxi Province (China) and CampaniAerospace in Campania region (Italy). As information was gathered both through policy documents (China and Italy) and direct interviews to cluster's stakeholders (Italy), the outcome is, according to the criteria suggested by Eisenhardt and Yin, a qualitative research. Comparing economic data provided by the respective countries' Statistical Offices, the authors assessed that Shaanxi Province and the Campania region share a “peripheral” position within their respective national context. Starting from this, the authors analyzed the formal documents which reported the experience of the two clusters.

The finding is that the outcome (the status of cluster which is assumed as “a value in itself”) of the convergence between firms' will to gain agglomeration advantages and the policymakers' plan to redress interregional economic disparities is definitely not an efficiency‐driven process. In the high tech sectors which are very sensitive to the increasing competition for technology on the international market, the pursuit of efficiency may, on the contrary, be dissipated.

As attested by the comparative literature, aims and performance of industrial clusters differ in accordance with the stage of economic development as well as the institutional and regulatory framework. The paper demonstrates, however, that in the take‐off stage, it is the position occupied by the host region within the national context which determines the behaviour of the actors concerned as well as the outcome of their commitment.

Purpose: In March 2020, due to the global emergency ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian government closed all national museums, institutes and places of culture heritage and landscape. The shutdown highlighted the need to develop and implement digital solutions, especially through ICTs, to enhance the cultural heritage worldwide by allowing people to go on admiring it, albeit remotely. Numerous initiatives were promoted, such as virtual experiential tours, online collections and ad hoc social and digital programs, all of which contributed to the rich dialogue between people and culture. Although digital initiatives for using and enjoying the cultural heritage have been successfully developed and implemented, in Italy the process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from being completed. This chapter investigates the development and implementation of digital technologies in the museums located in the Campania Region in Southern Italy throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify and analyse the experiential strategies and initiatives developed through information communication technologies (ICTs) to face the emergency.

Design/Methodology/Approach: By adopting a qualitative methodology, using primary and secondary data sources through a manual content analysis, experiential strategies and initiatives employed by the Campania regional museums when using digital solutions have been identified and categorised.

Findings: Despite the effectiveness of digital initiatives, and the experiences investigated appear both significant and interesting, there is still a need to develop and implement new experiential strategies in this field.

Research Limitations: This study presents several limitations, mostly related to its qualitative explorative nature, but also because its results cannot be generalised.

Practical Implications: These first results outline the need to further develop innovative strategies and initiatives within the museums. The process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from completion, potentially providing wide margins of further evolution by means of further investments in technology innovation, to rethink and redesign the traditional management models for enhancing the cultural heritage through digital technology.

Originality: This study provides a portrait of museum experiences supported by digital technologies in a country which plays a crucial role in the field of international cultural heritage. The analysis can also usefully contribute to the existing literature due to the qualitative technique employed for carrying out the multiple case study.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the way internships are currently evaluated in Campania Universities by host institutions.

The author collected and described questionnaires used by the universities of the Regional Observatory of Campania University System. These questionnaires are given by the host institutions to interns to fill out, and they evaluate skills growth in terms of initial and final assessment. Data related to these questionnaires are not publicly available, therefore the main data source comes from 732 post-internship questionnaires collected by the University of Suor Orsola Benincasa in 2013-2014.

Out of the 732 participants considered, 65 per cent rated excellent for motivation and interest, 55 per cent were rated excellent for the responsibility demonstrated, but only 37 per cent were rated excellent for the level of work autonomy achieved: a signal of the need to better prepare students for internships. Cross-technical and professional skills, which increase of +37 and +32 per cent, suggest that the experience has a very positive value. Regarding the experience outcome, the author detected a positive indicator: in 6 per cent of cases, an early employment occurred.

It has only been possible to analyze the questionnaires from one of the Campania universities. The results encourage us to explore further, extending instruments and research methods at a national level, too.

The author built a research database form to compare current questionnaires in Campania. The author collected internship evaluation data from Suor Orsola University to propose a common questionnaire among Campania Universities. By sharing the findings, other universities, national and international, could benefit from the results.

Although the previous literature considers independent directors as an internal mechanism for good corporate governance and higher financial disclosure quality, in contexts characterized by high ownership concentration, they may lack the mandate, the incentives and the ability to be an effective monitoring mechanism. Therefore, this study aims to focus on minority directors and investigate their impact on the earnings management activities for firms with concentrated ownership structures.

As the slate voting system is a peculiar feature of Italian corporate governance regulations, which gives minority shareholders the right to appoint at least one member of the board of directors (minority directors), this paper carries out a quantitative empirical analysis based on a sample of non-financial companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange to test the role played by minority directors in increasing incentives towards higher financial reporting quality.

Robust to different model specifications, including the endogeneity test, empirical findings show a negative relationship between minority directors and earnings management, while no relationship holds between the latter and independent directors, suggesting that minority directors might promote greater directors’ accountability than independent directors in highly concentrated ownership structures.

Relying on the empirical findings, this paper offers new insights on a peculiar internal corporate governance mechanism related to one of the most debated issues among financial market practitioners and regulators, namely, the protection of minority shareholders. Moreover, this paper offers new insights for academics and practitioners on a peculiar governance mechanism that could soon be widely adopted.

Rural tourism agents and operators occupy a central role in the use and diffusion of certain social representations of rurality through the mobilization and utilization of specific (yet increasingly global) signs and symbols that, in the urban imaginary, characterize typical and traditional rural settings. Rural tourism promotional materials may contribute to the reconfiguration of the countryside more in accordance with an idealized rural than with the reality of local features. This chapter examines how rural areas and rurality are presented and commodified, using an exploratory content analysis of online and offline materials combined with a survey directed at rural tourism entrepreneurs in five municipalities of two different Italian regions – Campania and Tuscany. Evidence strongly suggests a discrepancy between the real and the portrayed rurality, pointing at the emergence or reinforcement of rural reconfiguration processes, shaped by external and often global images and imaginaries.

This paper presents the first annual estimates for the rail-guided vehicles industry in post-Unification Italy. Nationally, maintenance was naturally trend-dominated, while new construction followed a Kuznets cycle; overall, maintenance exceeded new construction, while freight cars represented the largest component of the latter. The limited production of locomotives over the initial decades seems tied to high raw material costs rather than to technical inadequacy. Regionally, new construction was concentrated in the industrial triangle, and in Campania; maintenance was more widely diffused, as repair work tended to follow local traffic, but it too was largely absent from the swath of mostly Southern regions without major urban centers.

Southern Italy (2) is a multiform and atypical system in the Italian tourist economy. According to a general image, one of its main features is the extensiveness and quality of the region's natural resources, especially the coastal areas, attractions which traditionally make the macroregion known essentially as a destination for “sun&sea” holidays. In recent years, moreover, due to growing and widespread awareness for environmental quality and for cultural factors, this image seems to have acquired new impulse and new occasions of interest. The wealth of particularly important historical, artistic and archaeological attractions (Magna Graecia, Roman and Arab‐Byzantine influences, the Baroque, etc); the diffusion and, often, the persistence of social‐cultural traditions that resist the influence of modernisation, are today—just as they were at the time of the Grand Tour—factors of strong appeal for the Southern regions. Today, the “capital cities” in Southern Italy are the main historical destinations of the early years of tourism, especially for foreign demand: besides Naples and Palermo, cities such as Taormina, Sorrento, Capri and Ischia, or destinations of cultural tourism such as Agrigento and Siracusa stand out.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation capacity of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and micro enterprises through a theoretical framework that addresses the influence of some internal and external resources – derived from the literature review – on the development of innovation activities and on innovative firm’s results.

Based on a structured questionnaire, the empirical survey has involved 122 SMEs and micro enterprises of the most representative agrifood supply chains in the Campania region: dairy, wine, pasta and olive oil. The data have been then elaborated through the cluster analysis technique in order to explore any meaningful patterns that may exist in terms of the innovation capacity.

This study shows the existence of three clusters/innovation modes: collaborative innovators (CIs), non-collaborative innovators (NCIs), and non-innovators (NIs). Even though CIs represent 16.2 percent of the sample, this cluster shows an increased or stable revenue during 2011-2013 in comparison to the other two clusters.

This study provides a static view in comparison to the longitudinal analysis which could have provided a more dynamic view of the innovation capacity of agrifood SMEs and micro enterprises.

This is the first quantitative study focusing on the factors related to the innovation capacity of agrifood firms in the Campania Region. The study specifically analyses the innovation capacity of SMEs and micro enterprises. Moreover, it offers a comprehensive analysis of internal and external drivers to innovation.