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This study aims to assess the effectiveness of social return on investment (SROI) as a measure of the social impact produced by non-profit organisations and social enterprises that support family-centred care, an approach that focuses on the pivotal role of families in paediatric health care.

The study offers an analytical evaluation of the SROI created by the Italian branch of the Ronald McDonald House Charities and highlights (a) the participatory analysis of stakeholders and outcomes; (b) the measurement of inputs; (c) the definition of outputs and proxies for the measurement of outcomes; (d) the calculation of the SROI ratio; and (e) the results of a sensitivity analysis.

This study discusses the advantages and shortcomings of SROI analyses, the practical implications of this research on governance and management and the role of engagement in managing the expectations of stakeholders. The value of SROI measurements in shaping strategic and management decisions – with special emphasis on stakeholder relations – is also discussed.

Non-profit organisations and social enterprises often require tools that assess the outcomes of their activities. The present research can provide new guidance to SROI analysts, while drawing attention to the most suitable proxies and indicators for evaluating the SROI of organisations operating in the health care sector.

This paper aims to investigate how relational connectivity can enhance accountability through non-financial reporting regulation in Europe. The paper contributes to the mandatory disclosure literature and provides practical implications for the application of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU.

A case study research methodology is used, analyzing how a listed Italian insurance company embraces a dialogic communication approach with stakeholders along 2018.

From a theoretical standpoint, this paper enhances the scholarly understanding of the relevance and role of the concept of relational connectivity as a mean for effectively enhancing accountability, providing some prerequisites for effectively implementing relational connectivity. From a practical perspective, results address the criticism related to the directive 2014/95/EU guidelines in effectively helping the organization toward enhancing accountability. Through a case study, results show how companies can achieve in practice the goal of enhancing corporate accountability.

The paper is original, as it addresses the topic of relational connectivity applied to the EU Directive 2014/95/EU. Results contribute to the development of the understanding of the mandatory disclosure in a dialogic perspective. Additionally, the paper addresses a case study showing how the analyzed company used relational connectivity to engage an effective dialogue with stakeholders.

This study aims to ascertain the intentions of risk managers to use artificial intelligence in performing their tasks by examining the factors affecting their motivation.

The study employs an integrated theoretical framework that merges the third version of the technology acceptance model 3 (TAM3) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) based on the application of the structural equation model with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) estimation on data gathered through a Likert-based questionnaire disseminated among Italian risk managers. The survey reached 782 people working as risk professionals, but only 208 provided full responses. The final response rate was 26.59%.

The findings show that social influence, perception of external control and risk perception are the main predictors of risk professionals' intention to use artificial intelligence. Moreover, performance expectancy (PE) and effort expectancy (EE) of risk professionals in relation to technology implementation and use also appear to be reasonably reliable predictors.

Thus, the study offers a precious contribution to the debate on the impact of automation and disruptive technologies in the risk management domain. It complements extant studies by tapping into cultural issues surrounding risk management and focuses on the mostly overlooked dimension of individuals.

Yet, thanks to its quite novel theoretical approach; it also extends the field of studies on artificial intelligence acceptance by offering fresh insights into the perceptions of risk professionals and valuable practical and policymaking implications.

An increasingly dominant theme of recent M&A research has been the issue of cultural compatibility and the notion of “culture fit” and its contribution to post-combination performance and integration (Cartwright, 2005). Hence, various methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, have been applied to the M&A context to analyze the cultures of combining employee groups and the extent to which they share the same reality.

In the last few decades, narratives and stories have attracted the interest of organizational researchers and practitioners both as analytic tools and as a subject for study. This chapter explores the value of stories as a means of understanding culture, communicating values and ideals, promoting adaptive change, and developing cooperation and identification with the new merged organization. It illustrates the application of narrative methodologies within the context of a recent merger within the banking industry.

This chapter develops Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis to investigate the ways super-diversity comes to life in the everyday city through the intersection of the spatial and temporal. The chapter explores the multicultural intimacies of streets in a London neighbourhood through a close ethnographic focus on rhythms and atmospheres using slow-motion video. The research contributes to an emerging field of visual ethnographic scholarship by presenting slow-motion video as a method to explore the ‘presence’ (Lefebvre, 2004) of super-diversity and conviviality on the street.

I argue that in slowing down the encounters of the street, slow-motion video shows the often overlooked sensible and affective elements of super-diverse urban space, the mundane interactions between bodies, materials and technologies that create a form of ‘convivial affect’. I argue that these everyday encounters are shaped by a situated politics of difference and yet are also mediated by wider rhythms and atmospheres, contributing to a sense of ‘social time’. I draw attention to both the human and non-human elements of the streets. These material and technological elements can uncover the wider discourses and circulatory regimes of atmospheres in urban super-diverse neighbourhoods, focussing on their relation to broader flows of capital, forms of postcolonial culture and translocality.

This research has implications for how we understand super-diversity and its manifestations in urban space. It encourages policymakers and academics to recognise the affective human and non-human encounters that are a crucial aspect of conviviality, the everyday ways we live together with difference.

As public service deliverers, funded by public money and performing tasks on behalf of government, many non-profit organisations (NPOs) are under pressure to increase their performance. More and more NPOs have to prove they work efficiently, effectively and in line with the overall mission. As a result, the challenges these organisations are confronted with put pressure on their management. For NPOs, innovation and performance are managerial key issues. Ultimately, the question is what the factors are that lead to innovation and/or improved organisational performance in NPOs, given their important role in public service delivery, often acting as agents of government. For academics, this creates an ambitious research agenda. With a risk to oversimplify the picture, we could summarise this agenda as consisting of some crucial descriptive and explanatory questions. Major descriptive research questions concern the level of innovative behaviour of NPOs, their performance, and their organisational governance characteristics. In terms of explanations, there is a possible relationship between organisational governance features and organisational performance, between organisational governance features and innovation, and between innovation and organisational performance. In this chapter, we discuss the recent academic research concerning these issues, and, secondly, based on the assessment of this literature, we will propose some directions and challenges for such a research agenda.

François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.