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Quality control with a large content of data processing, represents an important field of robot application because of the inherent objectivity and consistency which robots possess.

The Olivetti SIGMA robot has been pioneering robot assembly for five years. In this article the experience gained and the problems that have occurred are discussed.

Successful use of automatic assembly in industry will require not only a complete re‐thinking, re‐assessment and evolutionary interaction but it will also demand that everything peripheral to the machine be considered as well.

Over the past few years, several scholars have focused on innovation strategies with specific regard to family food firms. In line with this research stream, the purpose of this paper is to understand how family food firms with long-standing traditions can implement innovative productions while remaining anchored to the past.

By adopting a qualitative research methodology, mainly based on a multiple case study, this paper seeks to cover some unexplored areas regarding the opportunity of combining tradition and innovation to achieve success in the highly competitive international arena in which family food firms operate. The authors analyze the cases of “La Torrente,” “Cioccolatitaliani” and “La Fabbrica della Pasta di Gragnano.”

Successful family food firms leverage their deep-rooted knowledge of both family and local traditions to innovate. At same time, they establish continuous info exchange flows with all of the firm’s stakeholders by adopting an open innovation approach.

From a theoretical perspective, there is a need for an in-depth study of how an effective blend of tradition and innovation is formalized, above all, in family firms. As for the practical implications, all the three case studies represent a best practice, especially for family firms with a long-standing history and strong local connections.

The paper shows how important it is to keep traditional factors in food industry and offers hints and suggestions to decision makers of family firms on how to valorize, in terms of competitiveness, their traditional resources – almost bound to their territory with innovation tools and processes.

The paper is interesting because it offers an analysis of a specific group of firms – family firms – that characterize many industries in Italy and in Europe. Although often small, these firms can show dynamism and creativity. The paper offers hints on how to approach innovation in the sector while keeping the value of tradition.

The originality of the proposed conceptual model stems from the need to overcome the previous theoretical models, which deal separately with sources of past knowledge and sources of new and/or external knowledge.

Increased awareness about the importance of a safe, healthy nutrition has changed human interactions with food and increased worldwide demand for high quality and ethical food. In this respect, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the concept of ethical food and the nature of kosher food production, assessing common traits and the main differences between the two. A literature review was undertaken in order to verify the direction in which further studies might proceed.

A research review on current literature was carried out exploring concepts of ethical food and food certification underpinning kosher businesses by means of an analysis of both producers’ and consumers’ perspectives. In order to proceed with an accurate analysis, the paper matches both the conceptual analysis and the bibliometric one. The overlap between these two forms of analysis makes results robust and useful for future research.

This review reveals common points between ethical and kosher food because attention is given to both processes and products and the way the market perceives them as expressions of trustworthy and safe production. Furthermore, the analysis reveals an under emphasis on kosher food in the academic world and the results reveal the importance of empirical analysis.

The analysis is focused mainly on kosher food production as an expression of ethical food. It would be interesting, however, to expand the analysis to other types of ethical certification such as Halal food, for example, in order to perform comparative evaluations.

From a practical point of view, it is interesting to note that kosher food is conceived as very safe food and that non-religious people are sensitive to this, which opens new horizons for ethical food. It also offers the possibility that firms that have never considered entering the field of ethical food certification may do so to expand their businesses. This implication also reveals that there is a higher attention on sustainability and safety in agro-food market. Therefore there are great opportunities of expansion for ethical food.

From a social point of view, this paper is of importance for several reasons. It deals with a relatively new and relatively unexplored issue; it points out the relevance of sustainability and safety in food market and consumer behavior, it presents the possibility of exploring knowledge interactions between different perspectives (multidisciplinary approach) and cultures which, in the opinion, will present significant challenge in relation to agro-food business research in the future.

The originality of this work is that of systematizing a literature review of ethical food, enlarging its scope and boundaries with specific reference to kosher food. It also highlights the need to focus on both management and marketing, since up to now there has been a lack of academic contributions to these areas of research. Directions for further research are outlined.

This study aims to focus on inter-firm collaboration, exploring the main capabilities that can make a business more or less open to collaboration; it also considers the role of both firm-specific and relationship-specific capabilities. The paper proposes a model that can be used to study how the combination of the two categories of capabilities determines a firm’s approach to collaboration.

Through a survey of high-end hotels in tourist destinations in Italy and the USA, this paper tests variable connected with firm-specific and relationship-specific aspects, using confirmatory factor analysis.

Firms with greater capabilities are less open to cooperation; weaker firms with fewer resources appear to be more inclined to cooperate, probably to gain access to resources and competencies they do not possess.

From a scientific perspective, this paper suggests an analysis based on both individual and relational capabilities when deciding whether to collaborate, while most studies based on a relational view just consider relational capabilities. The study could be enlarged to other countries and contexts.

From a practical perspective, it indicates the importance of accounting for different and sometimes diverging aspects when deciding to cooperate.

In terms of social implications, it shows that, apart from the relational capabilities they have, potential partners can decide not to collaborate.

The paper suggests a method of analyzing both individual and relational capabilities when deciding whether to engage in a collaboration. It shows that firms’ behavior does not necessarily depend on the firm’s relational capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to draw the state of the art on the trade credit, one of the most alternative form of firm financing, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The present study first reviews the theoretical papers focusing on the raison d’être of trade credit financing. Then the study identifies the empirical research studies in SMEs’ context and summarizes them on the basis of the following drivers: the country and the period analysed, the methodology used, the main findings and the presence of a shock in time span.

Findings reveal a discrepancy of results, especially in testing Meltzer’s hypothesis of substitution effects among trade and bank credit. The heterogeneity of results should be driven by lending infrastructure of the country analysed and the presence or not of a shock in time span considered. Financial constraints can reconcile the discrepancy of results. Then, most of the studies analysed are based on the assumption that trade credit is more expensive than bank credit.

This paper provides valuable conclusion on past and present studies on trade credit. First is providing a rule of the thumb in the reading of empirical evidences. Also researchers and academicians should deal with consideration regarding the cost of trade credit that still appears as a black box. This is an important issue in corporate finance, as it influences the financial decision of firms and it will be useful for conducting a deeper comparison on the alternative cost of firm financing.

The authors investigate the impact of disclosure tones and financial risk on the readability of annual reports in the banking sector. The authors also examine the moderating effect of banks' financial risk on the tone–readability relationship.

This study relies on the agency theory and the social psychology theory to formulate its testable hypotheses and explain the empirical findings. It uses a sample of 390 bank-year observations from banks listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchanges during the period 2014–2019. It also employs random effect regressions to analyze the data and to examine the reverse causality/endogeneity in order to obtain robust findings.

This study’s results demonstrate that easy (difficult) to read annual reports is significantly associated with positive (negative) tone. Bank managers characterized as “too positive/optimistic” and banks with higher financial risks publish less readable annual reports. The results also show that the interaction between negative tone and a bank's financial risk is inversely associated with reading difficulty, indicating that managers prepare easy text to clarify causes of their banks’ high risks, yet they communicate this easy text with a negative tone that reflects their feelings/emotions towards the financial risks of their banks.

This study’s findings call for the use of a plain English text that bears a neutral tone and urge financial analysts to go beyond the financial aspects of annual reports. They also stimulate policymakers to draft policies, which ensure the presence of audit committee members who possess a broad expertise to uncover the linguistic issues embedded in the annual reports.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study dedicated to exploring the tone–readability association in the GCC's banking sector.

The purpose of this study is to introduce innovative ideas into the treatment of the radical and incremental innovations and to fill the research gap by using: (1) methods that can perform complicated tasks and solve complex problems leading in creation of radical and incremental innovation and (2) a broad sample of firms across countries. The authors’ ambition is to contribute to the scientific knowledge by producing evidence about the novel usage of artificial neural network techniques for measuring European firms' innovation activities appearing in black boxes of innovation processes.

In this study, the authors incorporate an international context into Chesbrough's open innovation (OI) theory and, on the one hand, support the hypothesis that European radical innovators benefit more from foreign cooperation than incremental innovators. On the other hand, the results of the analyses show that European incremental innovators rely on domestic cooperation supported by cooperation with foreign public research institutes. Moreover, the use of decision trees (DT) allows the authors to reveal specific patterns of successful innovators emerging within the hidden layers of neural networks.

The authors prove that radical European innovators using either internal or external R&D strategies, while the combinations of these strategies do not bring successful innovation outputs. In contrast, European incremental innovators benefit from various internal R&D processes in which engagement in design activities plays a crucial role.

The authors introduce innovative ideas into the treatment of hidden innovation processes and measuring the innovation performance (affected by domestic or international cooperation) of European firms. The approach places emphasis on the novelty of innovation and the issue of international cooperation in the era of OI by designing the framework using a combination of artificial neural networks and DT.

In a pandemic framework (COVID-19), this chapter explores the impact of the global economy and socio-cultures concerning three axes: recreational, tourism, and hospitality. Although we slowly see an economic revival, it is well known that this sector of study is very susceptible to being affected by the context of nations. Following restrictions and measures taken by governments around the world to reduce the number of cases of coronavirus infections, many nations closed their borders, affecting international travel and by 2020 tourism had been reduced to the near cessation of operations due to the imminent fear of this poorly studied disease, and the service sector was negatively affected. It should be added that, according to the World Tourism Organization's projections, a decrease of between 20 and 30% is forecast for 2020 compared to the previous year.