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This paper seeks to analyse social report guidelines and practices within Italian local governments (ILGs). First, it compares the contents of the two Italian governmental guidelines for developing social reports in public sector organisations with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guideline, to determine similarities and differences in disclosures. Second, it examines a group of social reports issued by ILGs, to explore the incidence, frequency, and quality of disclosure, as against the GRI guideline.

The study uses content analysis to test the nature/content of the governmental guidelines, and to determine what was disclosed in a group of ILGs' social reports. The paper analyses the social reports by applying the Guthrie and Farneti coding instrument, extended by including the Italian governmental guidelines.

Several observations emerge from the present study. First, from the comparison of the GRI and the Italian governmental guidelines, it emerges that only a few categories of the latter are similar to the GRI and these concern mainly general aspects. Second, the disclosure of categories and elements in the social reports, as against the coding instrument, was found to be fragmentary. The paper concludes that the Italian governmental guidelines are of a managerial nature, and they have little to do with sustainability, except for aspects related to labour.

Little research has been published on social reporting practices within the public sector, unlike the private sector. In Italy social reports are an emerging practice, with a growing interest paid by the government and academia. Nevertheless, published research is mainly of a normative nature, and there is a gap on what actually is in social reports.

A year or so ago I discovered Writer's Choice: a Library of Rediscoveries, by Bill and Linda Katz which is, in fact, a book of recovery. As a librarian, I am acquainted with the Katzes' well‐known reference tools. As an author, I felt immediate solidarity with their bookman's idea of bringing back literary works that had somehow disappeared before due notice had been taken—a whole world of neglected books into which my own overlooked novel would have fitted nicely, if anyone had known of it to nominate mention.

This study aims to explore the evolution of corporate governance through a 100-year-old Italian Barilla pasta family business from its founding to 1971. The study builds on prior research which has applied the three-circle model of family business systems in a historic context.

Using legal records, five phases in the history of Barilla are noted. Annual reports and other sources have allowed for some more insights into business events and developments. Then, drawing on the three-circle model of family business, the corporate governance regime is mapped to the model and the family actors.

The findings here support extant literature in that the systems in the three-circle model are found to overlap more in a historic setting. Challenges with the three-circle model are also noted, specifically, when corporate governance is considered across a century of an organisation’s history.

This study supports prior use of three-circle model of a family business in an historic context, providing further evidence the model is not static over time. Contrary to the original three-circle model, this study suggests that family actors can potentially occupy more than one location in the model if the non-human actor of corporate governance and its effect on human actors is also considered.

Purpose – The “governance” term has gained ground both in the academic debate and in the political rhetoric. A growing use of the term is perceived to go hand-to-hand with a loss of conceptual accuracy. A theoretical reference able to provide a context for the development of empirical governance research is needed. The research aims at systemizing the literature developed around the governance term, identifying its building blocks; this would allow the term to become a reference point in the theory and practice of public administration.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is of a theoretical nature and based on literature review, both exploratory and synoptic, covering substantive and methodological material.Findings – Different public governance research clusters have been compared: Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Italian. Important differences, with reference to contents or related to research approaches in use, are found to exist between and within these clusters. Nonetheless, some common elements are included in the “public governance” concept.Research limitations/implications – Linguistic barriers make different literatures accessible at different degrees to the researcher, resulting in different depth of analysis. This limitation has in part been dealt with research assistance kindly provided by native language colleagues.Practical implications – The clarification of the different meanings of governance facilitates a more precise use in the policy and public management discourse. Having identified interdependencies between the different levels enables a better design of public management reforms.Originality/value – Original features of this chapter are the international comparison of different administrative traditions and the analysis of different disciplinary approaches.

This study seeks to examine the influence of the gamut of changes that have taken place in the past 15 years in the world of international football that have permanently transformed football from a game into a real business, while also considering some specific events that have affected Italian football in terms of the valuation of players' registration rights in the financial statements of the leading Italian football clubs throughout the period 1996‐2009.

The research was conducted taking into account the leading Italian clubs. The clubs considered were those that, in the period examined, qualified at least five times for a place in the Italian Serie A championship which is instrumental to their direct participation, or through the qualifying round, in the Champions League.

The research shows that questionable window dressing policies, consisting of artificially overestimated values of players' registration rights, aggravated the Italian football crisis that exploded during the 2001/2002 season. However, the origins of this crisis must be ascribed to the inability of Italian teams to control players' wages.

The study concerns only the leading clubs and examines the value of players' registration rights as an aggregate, as it is not always possible to extrapolate from financial statements the values attributed to individual players.

The Italian legal system, unlike others, establishes for corporations, the obligation to recapitalize if losses exceed a certain level. Based on this particular regulation, this research, suggesting a different interpretation of events, identifies the window dressing policies implemented by Italian football clubs during the period in question as behavior designed to evade the obligation to cover losses, and highlights the real purpose of the exceptional measures undertaken by the Italian legislator to save the entire industry.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market of rosé wines in Italy, to outline retail strategies and to investigate to what extent the price is affected by branding these wines.

A survey has been carried out on retailers by collecting data about wines as intrinsic attributes (grape variety, blending, origin, alcohol content, etc.) and extrinsic attributes (brand, price, packaging, etc.) and about outlet and retail environment. The hedonic analysis required a rearrangement of data survey, while a Box-Cox transformation allowed to control the strong heteroskedasticity detected of the data.

Results provide strategies for still, semi-sparkling and sparkling rosé market segments. Still rosé wines are strongly differentiated, while the price is affected by the appellation, grape variety, blending, brand and outlet features. Two main strategies are suggested: the first focuses on appellations endorsing consumer’s brand loyalty; the second is driven by retailers while involving weaker brands. Different pictures emerged for semi-sparkling and sparkling wines, as producers and retailers tend to follow consumer’s preferences for fresh and easy drinking wines as well as to extend the product assortment.

Results for sparkling rosé wines cannot be generalized. The high fragmentation hinders the hedonic model performance in capturing the price effects of brands, appellations, grape variety and wine blend.

The hedonic analysis provides suggestions for rosé wine producers that should reinforce their brand through associations among intrinsic attributes, such as appellation, and extrinsic ones, such as price, while satisfying retailer requirements.

The paper contributes to the knowledge base about the Italian rosé wine market, which is mostly export-oriented. Model results help to understand why the domestic consumption is stagnant with respect to other countries such as France or the USA.

To the initiate in French studies, the term “French Literature” might be understood to mean anything — and everything — written in the French language. Etymologists would no doubt support this interpretation wholeheartedly. To scholars of French literature, however, the term has a very different meaning. Professors in the field generally consider French literature to be that written in France since the Middle Ages, a literature which stands apart from other written works in the French language. This is not to say that there is not a very substantial body of literature written, for instance, in French‐speaking Canada, or Algeria, Tunisia, Haiti, or a myriad of other places. Certain individuals specialize in the literature (French) of those countries, but they do not refer to those writings as “French Literature”; they label them “French‐Canadian Literature,” “French‐African Literature,” and the like. This essay will be limited to a discussion of French literature — the major literature of France, considered worthy of special attention or acclaim by readers and scholars worldwide.

Any university library classification scheme must be capable of dealing not only with those subjects which are being taught but also with those which might be added to the curriculum in the future, and ideally it should arrange them in a way which is related to the needs of the teaching departments.

While the analysis of inter‐institutional collection overlap has become the profession's current analytic “hoola hoop,” the correlation of book collection to curriculum has the “acrid stench” of tampering with purse strings, and is studiously avoided. However, the analytical comparison of library holdings to constituencies being served could provide meaningful insights related to priorities and practices. This article describes and illustrates a method for analyzing this relationship.

This paper is a preliminary examination of a recently available translation of Attilio da Empoli’s 1926 Theory of Tax Incidence. This work has remained practically unknown to English readers despite considerable recognition in Italian and German journals. Compares and contrasts da Empoli and his book with two authors writing independently on tax incidence in close temporal proximity: Harry Gunnison Brown and Otto von Mering. Illustrates da Empoli’s novel ideas such as “oblique tax shifting” along with some of his numerous differences with the leading authorities of the time on the subject: Seligman, Edgeworth and Pantaleoni. Finds da Empoli’s work to be an early effort at extending questions of tax incidence beyond the boundaries of a narrow partial equilibrium approach.