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Each time there is a government change (indeed a very frequent scenario for Italy), and the leadership team of strategic offices and operations in the public administration is usually replaced. Using the job crafting theoretical framework, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the uncertainty generated by changes in the leadership teams of public offices shapes the public managers’ coping strategies.

This study adopts a deductive qualitative approach. Data for this study were collected through 47 interviews conducted with public managers working at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

The results of the study suggest that job crafting – a proactive approach aimed at customizing the content and nature of one’s job – represents a frequent strategy that public managers undertake, drawing on the personal and contextual resources at their disposal, to reduce perceived uncertainty associated with manager transition.

Questions related to the positive or negative impact of managerial transitions generated conflicting opinions in the literature. The authors demonstrate that job crafting could represent a valuable strategy adopted by executive managers to cope with increasing uncertainty associated with managerial transition due to government change, especially when these strategies enable to gain valuable personal and contextual resources for managers.

Drawing on the pay-for-performance (P4P) and job satisfaction literatures through an analysis of qualitative studies published on the topic, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a P4P-based system on job satisfaction and dissatisfaction among health care workers.

A meta-synthesis of the qualitative literature was conducted to investigate health care workers' opinions, perceptions and behaviors and fully understand what processes generate job satisfaction or dissatisfaction under P4P systems.

The findings suggest that P4P systems impact the job (dis-)satisfaction of health care workers based on the institutional, organizational, geographic and cultural context of reference. Specifically, job satisfaction – and thus motivation, occupational well-being and work engagement – can occur when the context is supportive, whereas job dissatisfaction – and thus work stress and pressure, burnout and work-life balance issues and distraction – is generated in the case of unsupportive contexts. Moreover, the findings suggest a virtuous/vicious circle whereby job satisfaction leads to positive performance and further fuels job satisfaction, while conversely job dissatisfaction generates worse performance, and this further worsens worker satisfaction.

There is a lack of studies comparing and analyzing current evidence on the job (dis-)satisfaction of health care workers operating in different contexts based on the reward system. This is the first research to analyze a significant number of studies with reference to the relation between P4P and job (dis-)satisfaction, which are topics in need of further study and investigation in health care settings around the world.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an organizational behavioral perspective that could provide useful analysis tools to understand the behavior of public leaders working in changeable and uncertain contexts (like the Italian one). More specifically, drawing on public administration and organizational behavior literatures, this paper examines whether the lack of continuity and long-term planning is significantly associated to public service motivation for public management.

The main contribution of this study is in taking into account the agency of public managers in reaction to wider changes in their political context. It is a theoretical study that considers sudden changes in government from a behavioral perspective, analyzing an extreme case of political and organizational turnover, namely the Italian context.

Public managers, when faced with constant change, act as transformational leaders and have the objective of leverage on intrinsic motivations in order to make the change accepted and, more so, to make it perceived as an advantage for the administration.

This study is among the first to address the issue of public service motivation and intrinsic motivations in carrying out the own job in the public sphere in a constantly changing scenario. Assuming that motivational incentives for public and private employees are different, namely that the former, in particular, are particularly attracted to motivations related to people and common good, this study investigates how public service motivation should be stimulated and supported in a context of change.

In a period of profound crisis for professions, this paper aims to develop knowledge about the role of proactive personality in the relationship between accountants’ occupational prestige and goal orientation.

The study draws upon the literature on professions and employs a multiple linear regression analysis to test the mediating role of proactive personality when accountants challenge external events threatening their profession. The study focuses on Italy, an area characterized by a high degree of precariousness where, over the past 30 years, accountants have been facing many threats undermining their occupational prestige.

The findings show that proactive accountants are more goal-oriented, unless they perceive that others consider their career to be prestigious. Therefore, the study demonstrates that occupational prestige – more volatile and subject to external forces– can shape proactive personality – usually internally determined and more stable – insofar a perceived low occupational prestige can be mediated by a proactive personality towards goal orientation.

The study has both academic and practical implications, showing that context-related factors are buffered by personal characteristics when professionals react to external events affecting their prestige.

The paper sheds lights on the critical issues of setting and achieving goals in uncertain situations, and enhances our understanding of the accounting profession, by identifying new reactions and behaviours based on personal factors as well as exogenous and contextual factors.

In light of the new way of interpreting work spearheaded by Generation Z, the objectives of this study are to investigate (1) whether young entrepreneurs identify their start-ups with “zebras” – that is, as a concrete response to the evanescence and fantasy of “unicorns” based on the simultaneous pursuit of profit and social value, mutualism and resilience – and (2) whether they adopt a “teal” organizational configuration – that is, one characterized by evolutionary purpose, self-management and wholeness.

Through a qualitative approach with 41 interviews, this study focuses on start-uppers and companies that are particularly innovative and promising in the Italian context, as selected by Forbes magazine in its ranking of the brightest entrepreneurs, leaders and stars under 30.

The results suggest that young entrepreneurs recognize the importance of the common themes of the zebra movement and therefore identify their startups with zebras. More specifically, Generation Z entrepreneurs: (1) pursue a dual (economic and social) purpose, (2) are mutualistic and (3) build their organizations with resilience and capital efficiency. In addition, the interviews show that the organizational approach taken follows the paradigm of teal organizations, particularly in terms of evolutionary purpose, distributed leadership and decision-making power, and employee wholeness and empowerment.

This is the first study to analyze the evolutionary trends of animal entrepreneurial “species” led by Generation Z entrepreneurs and organized on the basis of the teal paradigm.

How can a manager lead an organization or a team in a particularly turbulent time? How can management cope with chaos and uncertainty? Drawing on behavioral strategy theory, this study aims at investigating how hubristic managers can enable organizations to thrive, even over small time periods, in chaotic and uncertain contexts and settings.

This study uses a qualitative methodology to explore the possible positive effects of hubris in a behavioral strategy. In particular, 45 interviews with leaders and followers of particularly high-performing secondary schools have been administered to try to fully understand the origin, process and performance evolution of organizations led by hubristic managers.

The results showed that, in chaotic and uncertain times, hubris can prove to be a trump card for managers in dealing with the pitfalls and uncertainties of the context in which the organization operates. Three major attributes were identified – overconfidence and over-persistence, recklessness and contempt for critical feedback – defining the positive behavioral strategies implemented by hubristic managers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to highlight, by means of qualitative methodologies, the positive managerial hubristic-behavioral strategy during turbulent times in the school sector.

The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected millions of people globally, and it has exacerbated the existing gender inequalities that have affected women. The purpose of this study is to understand the perceptions of women concerning gender inequality in the workplace during the current pandemic. The goal is to give women a voice so they can explain their feelings regarding the problems they face in a pandemic world.

In this study, four poetic inquiries were developed to investigate how the lives of working women were changed during the pandemic in Italy. Poetic methodology is a creative and aesthetic representation of qualitative research that is capable of reporting data with more fluidity and freedom.

The results suggest that the gender gap is increasing and is embodied in a series of relational and economic problems related to remote work, in difficulty in reconciling private and work life and in a series of new telematic violence against women.

This study offers practical implications for policymakers by suggesting the application of diversity management initiatives to remove barriers to gender equality.

This study, through a poetic approach, is the first to investigate women's perceptions during the pandemic related to difficulties experienced in the work sphere.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework for the study of indoor air quality (IAQ) in hospitality premises. The goal is to identify the drivers of air pollution, both at the exogenous and endogenous level, to generate insights for facility managers.

The complexity of hospitality premises requires an integrated approach to properly investigate IAQ. The authors develop an overarching framework encompassing a monitoring method, based on real-time sensors, a technological standard and a set of statistical analyses for the assessment of both IAQ performance and drivers, based on correlation analyses, analysis of variance and multivariate regressions.

The findings suggest that the main drivers of IAQ differ depending on the area monitored: areas in contact with the outdoors or with high ventilation rates, such as halls, are affected by outdoor air quality more than guestrooms or fitness areas, where human activities are the main sources of contamination.

The results suggest that the integration of IAQ indicators into control dashboards would support management decisions, both in defining protocols to support resilience of the sector in a postpandemic world and in directing investments on the premises. This would also address guests’ pressing demands for a broader approach to cleanliness and safety and support their satisfaction and intention to return.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study developing a comprehensive framework to systematically address IAQ and its drivers, based on a standard and real-time monitoring. The framework has been applied across the longest period of monitoring for a hospitality premise thus far and over an entire hotel facility.

This work presents the results of the survey “Organisational structures and logistics in the branded product history of the grocery section in Italy” developed with the aim of pointing out the organisational structures for the logistics co‐ordination of successful firms. Starting from a review of the literature on the main logistics organisation theories, this paper presents an organisational analysis of 118 industrial firms, working in Italy in the grocery sector, carried out for the main logistics activities. On the basis of this anlaysis, a classifying model of the organisational configurations presently adopted in Italy for internal integration is proposed. According to the model, six different organisational solutions have been singled out: integrated logistics, partially integrated logistics, bipartite logistics, distribution logistics, manufacturing logistics, and split logistics.