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Collaboration among businesses, particularly in the current global economic downturn, can be a key strategy contributing to their survival. This study examines the case of micro firms involved in Terracotta art in Impruneta, Italy, and the extent to which collaboration occurs among the local artisans. In doing so, the study aims to consider collaboration theory in the context of micro firms.

Semi-structured, face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted among the owners and managers of ten of Impruneta's 16 Terracotta firms.

Whilst much of the academic literature highlights the multiple benefits of collaborative relationships, most participants acknowledge very limited engagement in collaboration. From the comments gathered, two distinct groups emerged, one composed of members of the local Terracotta association, who to some extent collaborate with one another, and the second, the non-members, who pursue their interests individually, or marginally collaborate outside Impruneta. Further, a number of barriers preventing collaboration were identified.

The apparent weak collaborative relationships among respondents may have ramifications for the further development of their sector, for instance, restricting innovation and marketing know-how, both of which could help address such external pressures as competition. The involvement of third parties, such as the local town hall or chambers of commerce, was suggested by several participants to help increase collaboration.

The study focuses on micro firms, a group that, despite its relevance for many countries' economies, has received limited attention from academic research, including with regard to collaboration and collaboration theory.

In some settings, sharecropping is associated with large extended families, high fertility, and early age of marriage. These demographic practices are often considered to be labor strategies for working extensive share‐tenancies. Where agricultural production is primarily labor intensive, landlords can increase their income, within certain limits, by maximizing the number of adult workers. If landlords hold considerable power over their tenants, they may have a large influence on demographic practices. Although this relationship between sharecropping and some of these demographic practices is found throughout much of history in northern Italy, the evidence is less clear for fifteenth‐century Tuscany. Herlihy and Klapisch‐ Zuber's study of the Catasto of 1427, a set of tax declarations, found no relation between household structure and land tenure. Some of their work suggested that fertility was higher among sharecroppers, but this relationship was not specified in detail. They did not consider the relationship between land tenure and age of marriage. This paper reconsiders the relationship between land tenure, household structure, fertility, and age of marriage. To try to correct for problems with Herlihy and Klapisch‐Zuber's land tenure variable, their data were aggregated to the administrative unit of analysis. The aggregated data show that sharecropping in rural Tuscany in 1427 was associated with household extension, high fertility, and early age of marriage, although the magnitude of this relationship was not large. Possible reasons for this weak relationship are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate how Tourism2vec, an adaptation of a natural language processing technique Word2vec, can serve as a tool to investigate tourism spatio-temporal behavior and quantifying tourism dynamics.

Tourism2vec, the proposed destination-tourist embedding model that learns from tourist spatio-temporal behavior is introduced, assessed and applied. Mobile positioning data from international tourists visiting Tuscany are used to construct travel itineraries, which are subsequently analyzed by applying the proposed algorithm. Locations and tourist types are then clustered according to travel patterns.

Municipalities that are similar in terms of their scores of their neural embeddings tend to have a greater number of attractions than those geographically close. Moreover, clusters of municipalities obtained from the K-means algorithm do not entirely align with the provincial administrative segmentation.

Food festivals are prevalent for those passionate about food experience globally. More importantly, feedback from food reviewers on mass media platforms has been becoming a critical factor in facilitating the decision-making process of tourists in particular cities. Moreover, stimulating local tourism activities, thanks to food festivals, prove advantageous to the well-being of local habitants. The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a general overview of food festival research trends in tourist cities, as tourism has the potential to contribute to targets in Goals 8, 12 and 14 on sustainable consumption and production and the sustainable use of resources, respectively, (UNWTO: World Tourism Organization).

This study searched and filtered documents from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, as well as used bibliometric analysis and other mathematical and statistical methods, to better understand the food festival research context between 1970 and 2021. The carriers with mathematical and statistical methods. VOSviewer algorithm was used to identify critical input for visualizing bibliometric networks and to create a framework for this academic food festival research.

The findings are primarily related to pre and post-COVID-19 research on food festivals worldwide. Furthermore, using an inductive approach, this paper reveals the impact of food festivals in cities and tourist behaviors. According to the findings, the food festival research trends are about “food festivals,” “slow food festivals” and “local food festivals.” Factor analysis is one of the most common analyses in this type of research. Other studies could use the findings and limitations to select appropriate themes and analysis approaches for their research topics.

Research data sets are mainly from articles that may not account for all actual trends during this pandemic.

This review expects to provide insights into food festivals and help future researchers to recognize several research gaps such as the lack of research on food festival manufacturers and producers or the consistency in visitors' aspect research of quality service, visitors' loyal intentions, satisfaction and culinary experience. The tourism industry can find research trends of food festivals and issues following COVID-19 to find their management styles to fit the context of the post-COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating organizing a safe and effective food festival.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the literature addressing internationalisation of firms from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

This paper presents an inter-disciplinary systematic review of literature about the internationalisation of firms from CEE.

Three different clusters of research were identified. In the “Internationalisation Processes” cluster, containing many comparative studies, the focus is on specific approaches adopted by local firms in the process of internationalisation. One of the leitmotivs is the dichotomy between hostile home-country factors that create the need for internationalisation and market-seeking motives that guide the search for international expansion. The “Internationalisation Variables” cluster aims to explain the reasons of success or failure of internationalisation processes and strategies; this cluster focuses on possible facilitating or hindering aspects experienced by CEE firms and one often-cited element is the firm’s network. Finally, the “Internationalisation Outcomes” cluster assumes a reverse approach when compared to the other two clusters. Indeed, the internationalisation phenomenon can also be studied in terms of its effect on the firm; the elements sought in these types of studies are both potential benefits and risks associated with internationalisation in CEE countries. The latter category in particular gives rise to interesting questions for future research.

Given that large, developed economies tend to receive much academic interest and that smaller transitional economies are not always adequately represented in the scientific discussion, this paper contributes to the literature on internationalisation.

Practitioners and researchers are persistently trying to identify critical product/service attributes that generate greater customer satisfaction, which in turn yields multiple positive outcomes for the business. However, traditional measuring of attribute performance does not account for a non-linear nature of the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to apply an alternative method – penalty-reward contrast analysis (PRCA) grounded in Kano model – to a wine festival setting and to estimate the effects of each attribute on the overall satisfaction.

The aim of the study is to use a self-administered survey distributed to attendees of a large wine festival in the USA, resulting in a sample of 250 festival attendees.

Personnel and entertainment were considered “must-be” or basic factors for wine festivals. Failing to deliver on these dimensions will lead to attendees’ frustration and is likely to outweigh positive impact of other factors. Wine was considered to be a linear, or performance, factor with symmetrical positive and negative impact on satisfaction. Food and facilities were non-significant in predicting customer satisfaction.

Given that most wine festivals operate with rather scarce resources in a competitive environment, using an approach that helps determine how limited resources are best deployed to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction is beneficial for the industry. The study provides new insights to wine festivals managers as to how drivers of satisfaction may vary according to attributes of both the festival and the attendees.

The study adopts the novel approach of the PRCA in its application to wine festivals, making the study unique and noteworthy. It brings new knowledge about quality components of wine festivals and adds support to the new evaluation tool.

Despite their economic and cultural significance, the growth of handicraft micro firms is vulnerable, given their small size and resource limitations. By examining the impact of cooperation on firm performance via innovation capability, this study shows how micro firms can address constraints and achieve sustainable development by acquiring and utilizing external resources, complemented by innovation capability, through internal development.

Data were collected from 164 handicraft micro firms in Pakistan via a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was employed to estimate interrelations of various constructs simultaneously and control measurement errors.

The impact of cooperation with customers and suppliers on firm performance via innovation capability was positive and significant. Contrarily, competitor cooperation did not significantly affect innovation capability. Furthermore, there was a positive and significant interaction effect of customer and competitor cooperation on innovation capability. Thus, micro firms must reinforce their customer and supplier relationships through innovation capability and internal transformation for sustainable development. Moreover, a balance must exist between cooperation and competition to achieve optimal innovation returns for the sustainable development of firms.

This study emphasized that micro firms must strengthen their customer and supplier relationships via innovation capability and internal development to achieve higher performance. Moreover, the study introduced a new dimension for measuring firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to remark the importance of sustainable technologies in the façade renewal of existing buildings in order to fit their energetic performance to different climatic inputs, following the new European Energy Standards for energy savings.

Technical data and typical examples of upgrading interventions in the direction of the passive solar gaining, natural cooling and other relevant sustainable technologies for building envelopes are presented and critically examined.

The energy failure in existing buildings is mainly due to the poor insulating efficiency of the façades. Making use of hi‐tech envelopes, not only the energetic balance, but also the architectural value of a building can be improved.

Architects and builders can use the advices from this study in determining the advantages of up‐to‐date technologies in the enhancement of the energetic performance of buildings.

Examples presented in this paper indicate how sustainable technologies, that are commonly used in new constructions where the concept starts from a low‐environmental impact, can be also employed in the refurbishment of existing buildings, which is the main challenge for the global reduction of CO₂. An overview on the main technical of intervention can indicate to architects and planners the potentiality for the improvement of the existing buildings, in order to reduce the overall energy balance.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate key criteria underpinning network-facilitated green innovation capability development in micro-firms.

Micro-firms, those firms with less than ten full-time employees, need to continuously innovate in order to sustain their business in the emerging green economy. This study uses an interpretive multiple case approach to explore micro-firm owner-manager (O/M) green innovation activities, encompassing O/M views on facilitated network engagement in Ireland and Canada over a 12-month period.

The findings show that proactive implementation of green innovation is influenced by the O/M’s natural environment orientation and the potential for economic gain, while facilitated networks provide an additional resource that the O/M can draw from that allows the O/M to test new ideas, comprehend new and existing legislation and identify potential supports in pursuit of green innovation capability development within the micro-firm.

This study offers a contribution to knowledge in the areas of green innovation, micro-firm capabilities and facilitated network engagement. However, the sample size is small and distance was a challenge, yet data and case protocols are in place which allow for replication of the study. As the research is embedded in the resource and capability theories, alternative theoretical frameworks may shed a different light on the research question.

Prior studies have found that facilitated networks have a positive impact on micro-firm sustainability as these networks enhance the firm’s constrained resource base. The proposed framework can be used as a guideline for support organisations including facilitated networks in assisting micro-firms in reaching their green innovation goals and objectives. It can also be used by micro-firms in the attainment of the green innovation capability.