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The purpose of this study concerns numerical studies and experimental validation of the mechanical behavior of hybrid specimens. These kinds of composite specimens are made up of thin carbon and glass substrates on which some Macro Fiber Composite^® (MFC) piezoelectric patches are glued. A proper design and manufacturing of the hybrid specimens as well as testing activities have been performed. The research activity has been carried out under the FutureWings project, funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework.

The paper describes the basic assumptions made to define specimen geometries and to carry out experimental tests. Finite element (FE) results and experimental data (laser technique measurements) have been compared: it shows very good agreement for the displacements’ distribution along the specimens.

Within the objectives of the project, the study of passive and active deformation characteristics of the hybrid composite material has provided reference technical data and has allowed for the correct adaptation of the FE models. More in particular, using the hybrid specimens, both the bending deformations and the torsion deformations have been studied.

The deformation capability of the hybrid specimens will be used in the development of prototypical three-dimensional structures, that, through the electrical control of the MFC patches, will be able to change the curvature of their cross section or will be able to change the angle of torsion along their longitudinal axis.

The design of nonstandard specimens and the tests executed represent a novelty in the field of structures using piezoelectric actuators. The numerical and experimental data of the present research constitute a small step forward in the field of smart materials technology.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. In Italy, acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a major cause of hospitalization and healthcare costs. AMI is a myocardial necrosis event caused by an unstable ischemic syndrome. The Italian government has defined an indicator called “AMI: 30-day mortality” to assess the quality of the overall care pathway of the heart attacked patient. In order to guarantee high standards, all hospitals had to implement techniques to increase the quality of care pathway. The aim of the paper is to identify the root cause and understand the mortality rate for AMI and redesign the patient management process in order to improve it.

A Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach was used in this study to analyze the patient flow in order to reduce 30-days mortality rate from AMI registered by Complex Operative Unit (COU) of Cardiology of an Italian hospital. Value stream mapping (VSM) and Ishikawa diagrams were implemented as tools of analysis.

Process improvement using LSS methodology made it possible to reduce the overall times from 115 minutes to 75 minutes, with a reduction of 35%. In addition, the corrective actions such as the activation of a post-discharge outpatient clinic and telephone contacts allowed the 30-day mortality rate to be lowered from 16% before the project to 8% after the project. In this way, the limit value set by the Italian government was reached.

The limitation of the study is that it is single-centered and was applied to a facility with a limited number of cases.

The LSS approach has brought significant benefits to the process of managing patients with AMI. Corrective actions such as the activation of an effective shared protocol or telephone interview with checklist can become the gold standard in reducing mortality. The limitation of the study is that it is single-centered and was applied to a facility with a limited number of cases.

LSS, applied for the first time to the management of cardiovascular diseases in Italy, is a methodology which has proved to be strategic for the improvement of healthcare process. The simple solutions implemented could serve as a guide for other hospitals to pursue the national AMI mortality target.

In light of the difficulties the governments typically face in conserving and managing their rich public cultural heritage, which often lingers in a condition of neglect, this study aims to identify a set of additional tools capable of providing adequate financial resources as well as skills.

The general research methodology adopted is of a qualitative, rather than a quantitative, nature. In fact, the resulting considerations are mainly the consequence of a first broad theoretical examination, aimed at analyzing the different management models a public entity may adopt, and an applicable verification, aimed at describing some case histories selected by means of interviews.

The study develops a preliminary reflection on possible sector-specific models for public-built cultural heritage management that have not been well defined yet, especially so in reference to one of the institutional options, namely, the adoption of public–private–people agreements. Indeed, in addition to establishing the ties needed to link public institutions with the business sector, some strong involvement of society as a whole is advised to foster the implementation of projects and expedite the solution of shared problems. At a local level, for instance, private stakeholder participation must be encouraged, with special attention to the latter's cultural closeness to the territory involved.

This research identifies some tools suitable for adoption in the cultural heritage field, which would serve as perfect examples of community involvement and commitment, and some useful case studies resulting from the Italian context.

The authors set the goal to find the solution of the Eisenhart problem within the framework of three-dimensional trans-Sasakian manifolds. Also, they prove some results of the Ricci solitons, η-Ricci solitons and three-dimensional weakly  symmetric trans-Sasakian manifolds. Finally, they give a nontrivial example of three-dimensional proper trans-Sasakian manifold.

The authors have used the tensorial approach to achieve the goal.

A second-order parallel symmetric tensor on a three-dimensional trans-Sasakian manifold is a constant multiple of the associated Riemannian metric g.

The authors declare that the manuscript is original and it has not been submitted to any other journal for possible publication.

Accomplishing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is imperative for societies to meet their grand challenges. Achieving these goals by 2030 requires sustainability change agents with a can-do-attitude. This study aims to show how institutions of higher education can become partners for social marketing in bringing forward such change agents.

Taking a case study approach, this paper examines a master’s programme to identify factors relevant to educating sustainability change agents that can serve as a basis for a social marketing planning primer to foster the SDGs.

This study presents the social marketing discipline with a viable option for supporting the achievement of the SDGs through higher education. Its contributions are twofold. First, it is shown that when interdisciplinarity and a project-based approach are conceptualized and organized to create a motivating and meaningful learning environment with the SDGs as guiding principles, students, as sustainability change agents, can increase awareness and have the potential to generate impacts regarding the SDGs at the individual, organizational and institutional levels. Second, based on this, the paper provides guidance to social marketers regarding the planning of a campaign targeting higher education institutions. The authors argue that the aim of this campaign should be to promote the implementation of the SDGs as guiding principles above all, as this can facilitate the process of students becoming sustainability change agents who help achieve the goals in a timely manner.

Whilst single case studies are usually limited in drawing generalizations, the present study offers a starting point for investigating the role of universities as a target group for social marketing in fostering further sustainable development. Building on its findings, future research could test the proposed social marketing planning primer and evaluate the impact on the SDGs at a larger scale than only one university.

It is proposed to use the findings of the study to model a social marketing campaign aimed at universities to motivate them to help develop sustainability change agents in all disciplines by integrating the SDGs as guiding principles for study programmes.

Students’ impacts range from leading peers to buy sustainable products and consume less to influencing a company to adopt sustainable packaging, thereby contributing to social change.

This study is among the first to examine the possible effect of a study programme on the SDGs at different societal levels by taking the perspectives of multiple stakeholders into account and combining the theory of higher education with sustainability and social marketing.

Institutional, economic, social and technological advancements enable openness to cope with wicked public management issues. Although open innovation (OI) is becoming a new normality for public sector entities, scholarly knowledge on this topic is not fully systematized. The article fills this gap, providing a thick and integrative account of OI to inspire public management decisions.

Following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, a domain-based literature review has been accomplished. Consistently with the study purpose, a hybrid methodology has been designed. Bibliographic coupling permitted us to discover the research streams populating the scientific debate. The core arguments addressed within and across the streams were reported through an interpretive approach.

Starting from an intellectual core of 94 contributions, 5 research streams were spotted. OI in the public sector unfolds through an evolutionary path. Public sector entities conventionally acted as “senior partners” of privately-owned companies, providing funding (yellow cluster) and data (purple cluster) to nurture OI. An advanced perspective envisages OI as a public management model purposefully enacted by public sector entities to co-create value with relevant stakeholders (red cluster). Fitting architectures (green cluster) and mechanisms (blue cluster) should be arranged to release the potential of OI in the public sector.

The role of public sector entities in enacting OI should be revised embracing a value co-creation perspective. Tailored organizational interventions and management decisions are required to make OI a reliable and dependable public value generation model.

The article originally systematizes the scholarly knowledge about OI, presenting it as a new normality for public value generation.

This paper aims to trace subsequent steps of the sustainability reporting evolution in terms of changes in the organisation fields and professional jurisdictions involved. As such, it highlights the (interrelated) organisational and professional challenges associated with the progressive incorporation of “sustainability” within corporate reporting.

The paper draws on Suddaby and Viale’s (2011) theorisation of how professionals reshape organisational fields to highlight how organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital evolve alongside the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting.

The paper shows organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital mobilised during the recent evolution of sustainability reporting, starting from a period in which there was no space for sustainability, to more recent periods in which sustainability gained increasing momentum beyond initial niches, and culminating in more integrated forms of sustainability reporting.

Although the analysis is limited to empirical evidence collected by prior research and practice on sustainability reporting, the paper offers a view to imagine how the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting relies on and affects organisational fields and professional jurisdictions.

The paper offers a lens to interpret corporate and professional challenges associated with the more recent evolutions of sustainability reporting practice and standard setting. It also allows framing the papers accepted in the special issue on “new challenges in sustainability reporting” and concludes by suggesting an agenda for future research.

Gifting is a typical monetization strategy for live streaming platforms to motivate providers’ live content contribution. However, research regarding the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention is still at an infant stage. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention during live streaming.

The authors build a model to uncover the factors that affect individuals’ gifting intention from a streamer–content perspective, and the hypotheses are largely validated by online survey data through structural equation model analysis.

Individuals’ perceived attractiveness of the streamers is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related live streaming, whereas individuals’ perceived similarity with the streamers is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related and non-leisure-related live streaming. For live content-related factors, the individuals’ perceived utilitarian value of content is significantly and positively associated with gifting intention for non-leisure-related live streaming, whereas the individuals’ perceived hedonic value is significantly positively associated with gifting intention for leisure-related live streaming. Perceived symbolic value is insignificantly associated with gifting intention for neither type of live streaming.

The research is an original work and significantly contributes to live streaming and PWYW literature, and the findings derived from this study can guide live streaming platforms to regulate individuals’ gifting intentions/behaviors better.

The Italian government addressed the first wave of its COVID-19 outbreak with a series of social restrictions and calculative practices, all branded with the slogan #istayathome. The hashtag quickly went viral, becoming both a mandate and a mantra and, as the crisis played out, we witnessed the rise of the Italian social movement #istayathome. This study examines how the government's calculative practices led to #istayathome and the constituents that shaped this social movement.

The authors embrace social movement theory and the collective identity perspective to examine #istayathome as a collective action and social movement. Using passive netnography, text mining and interpretative text analysis enhanced by machine learning, the authors analysed just over 350,000 tweets made during the period March to May 2020, each brandishing the hashtag #istayathome.

The #istayathome movement gained traction as a response to the Italian government's call for collective action. Thus, people became an active part of mobilising collective responsibility, enhancing the government's plans. A collective identity on the part of the Italian people sustained the mass mobilisation, driven by cohesion, solidarity and a deep cultural trauma from COVID-19's dramatic effects. Popular culture and Italy's long traditions also helped to form the collective identity of #istayathome. This study found that calculative practices acted as a persuasive technology in forming this collective identity and mobilising people's collective action. Numbers stimulated the cognitive, moral and emotional connections of the social ties shaping collective identity and responsibility. Thus, through collective identity, calculative practices indirectly influenced mass social behaviors and the social movement.

This study offers a novel theoretical perspective and empirical knowledge to explain how government power affects people's culture and everyday life. It unveils the sociological drivers that mobilise collective behaviors and enriches the accounting literature on the effects of calculative practices in managing emergencies. The study contributes to theory by providing an understanding of how calculative practices can influence collective behaviors and can be used to construct informal networks that go beyond the government's traditional formalities.

Previous research has found mixed evidence of an attitude–behavior gap in organic food consumption. However, the complex mechanisms underlying this gap warrant further investigation. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of word-of-mouth (WOM), trust, and involvement in the relationship between consumer organic food attitudes and conative loyalty. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as underlying framework for modeling our conceptualized arguments.

A moderation and moderated mediation analysis was performed on a cross-sectional sample of 1,011 Australian organic food consumers.

The results support the TPB-inspired moderated-mediation model. Specifically, the authors found moderated mediation effects of WOM, trust, and involvement on conative loyalty via attitudes toward organics.

The cross-sectional research design and the focus solely on Australian consumers constitute limitations of this study.

The authors' findings imply that an analysis of the attitude–behavior gap should go beyond the testing of contingent consistency hypotheses and instead combine moderation and mediation mechanisms to better model consumer decision-making leading to conative loyalty. Practitioners would face a resource challenge when targeting low-trust, low-involvement, and low-WOM consumers as developing conative loyalty of these segments would require a longer-term approach through building favorable attitudes toward organic foods.

This study is one of the first to demonstrate the potential of examining the attitude–behavior gap in the organic food context through a moderated mediation lens in explaining the dynamics of conative loyalty.