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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how a mega event can be an opportunity for a territory to be developed as a marketing product. The topic is analysed in the pre-event phase, from the point of view of marketing mix and governance.

A qualitative method was adopted with a case study on Monza and Brianza province (northern Italy) which is strongly involved in EXPO2015 initiatives. The triangulation among multiple sources such as documents, interviews and observation, allow for deeper data collection.

A mega event can enhance development and repositioning also of minor territories. There are, however, two main conditions for benefiting from such an opportunity: to plan the marketing mix, taking into account people and partnerships, and to ensure a vision on territory through coordination with a legacy perspective.

This study is not representative or generalizable. However, it gives insights into the mechanism of coordination and collaboration between different stakeholders and on how to plan the Monza and Brianza marketing mixes.

The research has implications for governance mechanisms and for marketing politics both for public and private decision-makers, especially in the pre-mega event phase, but also with some inputs into legacy phase.

The research is original for three reasons: the context concerns Monza and Brianza province, and so can help understand how mega events can help a minor territory reposition itself; the research looks at the managerial implications of place marketing in this pre-event phase; and in Italy, provinces are being reorganized or abolished: this case study looks at a province and its future.

The paper will present the case study of preventive and planned conservation applied to the Royal Villa and Park of Monza, which is one of the pilot projects within the general framework of Monza and Brianza Cultural District. Starting from an in-depth analysis of the Royal Villa, which represents a recent conservation and valorisation intervention developed by both public and private subjects, the purpose of this paper is to define an operative model for the management of complex properties, at communicating good practices for the maintenance of the built heritage and at identifying the priorities for the interventions.

The research project foresaw a first collection of data and information related to the previous conservation activities executed upon the case study, the design of a conservation plan in all its parts (technical handbook, conservation programme, economic budget, user handbook) through an information system dedicated to the conservation of built cultural heritage, and its fulfilment. In the meantime, a context analysis of the Royal Villa and Park of Monza was developed, with a specific attention to the diversified historical buildings located in the park.

The action research carried out has been evaluated in the framework of upstream perspective theories. This enabled to highlight the importance of an integrated approach; of the need of sharing the collection of data in order to set up evidence-based policies; and of the need to enhance the skills of involved professionals and decision makers.

A progress in protection measures, the understanding of conservation and valorisation as preventive activities, effectiveness of private business models for maintenance, dissemination of good practices, and creation of a network of local stakeholders.

The paper aims at describing a supporting model for the decision-making process that may steer the location decisions of international businesses. This is made possible by a measurement system where the characteristics of a territory are assessed with reference to some key factors that are internationally known to investors, to the aim of spotting the best location to implement a property investment.

The surveys analysed when producing this paper highlighted the presence of internationally renowned and shared factors that the enterprises generally take into consideration in their decision-making process, and which strongly influence the decision to locate a business in a territory to the detriment of another. By adopting and organizing these “key factors” in a systemic way, the model introduced in this paper supports enterprises in their location choice. It analyses and measures some territorial contexts (with no limits regarding their size) based on the scores assigned to these contexts after the analysis of the 12 key factors.

The analysis had two outputs: on the one hand, its results allowed to check whether the areas are actually in line with the expectations and with the requirements of a potential investor, with reference to the activity that such investor is willing to promote; on the other, the identification of the characteristics of the area provides the basis to define the vocation of the areas under examination, thus helping the drawing of future development scenarios.

The surveys analysed when producing this paper highlighted the presence of internationally renowned and shared factors that the enterprises generally take into consideration in their decision-making process, and which strongly influence the decision to locate a business in a territory to the detriment of another.

The aim of this paper is to analyse why Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) pursue internationalization (current and future entry modes, motivations, advantages and difficulties) and how they go about it, with reference to four key areas: innovation and technology, networking, environmental approach and human resource (HR) competences.

A questionnaire was distributed to 792 enterprises with a response rate of 24.37 per cent. Data were collected using the computer assisted web interviewing (CAWI) method and processed with Rasch analysis, Principal Components Analysis and Cluster analysis methods.

The paper presents the results of a quantitative research on SMEs located in the Province of Monza and Brianza – one of the most productive territories in Italy. Four different clusters emerged with specific approaches. Briefly, this paper points out that: innovation is mostly linked to the product and is incremental; HR and their competences are crucial for facing complex markets; the green issue is not dominant (it is considered only for saving energy and reducing cost production); and networking is not a key issue (except informal relations, contractual agreements and strategic alliances).

The research could be extended: through a longitudinal survey on the same sample; by covering different territories on the same topics. The cluster analysis identifies potential guidelines for entrepreneurial behaviour in respect to key factors for exiting from the economic and financial crisis: innovation and technology, formal and informal networks, the “green” approach, HR training.

This paper presents a new interdisciplinary approach that may work beyond country boundaries, providing a new basis to the debate on the internationalization of SMEs.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) recognizes the right of disabled people to access work. Against this legislative backdrop, this study explores the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian system of targeted placement for disabled people, based on Law 68/1999, which delegates to regional authorities the management of the labor market. The examination centers on the perspective of companies, the primary stakeholders in the inclusion of persons with disabilities within organizational structures.

The article discusses the results of focus groups conducted with 28 managers of large, medium and small enterprises in Lombardy (Italy). Qualitative analysis was employed, and the results were structured using a simplified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, incorporating practical recommendations.

The analysis leads to practical suggestions to improve the entire targeted placement process at the regional level, from selection and accompaniment to evaluation, such as improving the networking of local stakeholders who deal with the inclusion of disabled people, homogeneity of the procedures in different regions, making all employees aware of diversity management, etc. The territorial network and the welfare environment are particularly important in achieving a successful targeted placement and to promote an inclusive corporate culture.

This study is not representative of Italy as a whole, as it remains a qualitative investigation focused on a single region.

This contribution accomplishes an in-depth study of the law of labor inclusion of people with disabilities observed from the point of view of companies, which are still usually reluctant to integrate people with disabilities into their organizations or encounter difficulties in doing so.

Land use change in the Alpine Regions is dominated by two main factors: a process of re-naturalization and a process of expansion for settlements with the relevant occupation of low-valley areas. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of land take measures in the Lombardy Alpine context and the recent proposals of spatial planning instruments for land resource management. New solutions to limit soil sealing have to be confronted with qualitative proposals at local scale.

The paper collects different research outputs regarding land take in the Italian Alpine context and carried out by GIS software and tries to show the new methodologies available for limiting and mitigating soil sealing, in accordance with DIAMONT aims.

The paper argues that the data are now available to analyze the problem and new operative methods have to be settled in the recent context of European Union (Soil Sealing Guidelines) to support decision making in planning, suggesting land use allocation and possible ecological compensation.

The new qualitative decision models have to be assessed for a better ecological integration in supporting land use decisions.

An evaluation of land take at local scale caused by land use changes is a good support in the decision-making process of planning.

In this paper a method based on a local scale is reported, which can be used for the specific assessment of land take in order to support land-use decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how comprehensive the management of common repairs in the nineteenth-century urban housing in Edinburgh is in the European context. The city experienced a variety of approaches since the 1970s to repairs of exposed decorative elements and the envelope, whose condition is exacerbated by inappropriate interventions and climate change.

The debate is framed in practice in Western Europe where economy, administration and conservation cultures have been similar since the 1970s: property manager (Glasgow), role of housing agency (Venice), Monumentenwacht’s periodical inspections for subscribers (Flanders), tax incentives (France, Italy, Spain), linking management and procurement (Libretto Casa, Rome) and the emerging concept of preventive conservation.

Edinburgh has a holistic and technically rich management experience, with a strong educational focus, which shows the immense volume of work required, hampered by the fragmentation of ownership and the small size of the repair industry. Practice can improve in Edinburgh and Europe through increased awareness, tax incentives, regular inspections, legal recognition of the need for maintenance and stepping-up the debate at national, European and political level, towards preventive conservation approaches.

The study profited from direct knowledge of the approach in Edinburgh and other areas, but little has been published on each area outside the local level, so appraisal depended on language knowledge.

This first reading of practice at the European level may be of value to the national agencies referred to, for policy development or European initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the process that occurs within public employment offices (PEOs) and its consequences for unemployed people. Specifically, it analysed some practices needed to implement activation programmes developed in some PEO in Lombardy (Italy) and the role of front-line officers, promoting a dialogue between the literature on activation policies on one hand and the literature on street-level bureaucracy on the other.

The fieldwork has been conducted in Lombardy, which is one of most economically developed areas both in Italy and in Europe. The empirical research integrated quantitative and qualitative research tools; specifically a CATI survey of 994 persons; participant and non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and an analysis of documents in four PEOs.

The paper describes and analyses both practices needed to implement activation programmes and the perceptions of the social actors (unemployed people and front-line officers) who build and address these practices daily. Specifically, the attention is focussed on the different forms of discretion used by PEOs’ front-line officers and a mix of technical, relational and psychological support received in the PEOs. Moreover, the authors noticed that the front-line officers’ discretion seemed to be more limited in those parts of the activation process in which it should be more relevant, that is, the identification of training courses aimed at increasing unemployed workers’ skills. Notwithstanding these limits, many users expressed positive opinions of these courses, which could be explained by secondary functions of training courses.

The qualitative portion of the fieldwork has limited generalisability because it focussed on few PEOs.

The findings are relevant to policy makers who deal with activation policies and to public and private organisations that implement those policies.

Many studies have analysed the implementation of the welfare-to-work model that has oriented the reforms of labour market activation policies in most countries, focussing on the more tangible outcomes (essentially their efficacy in terms of re-employment rates). A growing stream of recent literature has begun to place more attention on the non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing mainly on countries with quite a long tradition of activation policies while remaining scant in countries where the implementation of activation programmes is still fragmented and more recent (like Italy). This paper aims to begin filling this gap by improving the knowledge on some non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing on user-officer relations and on daily practices in PEOs.

This study aims to explore the propensity of university students to use different sustainable transport modes, taking into account individual and specific trip characteristics, as well as students’ psychological traits (i.e. attitudes).

Using the transport mode preferences of 827 students who responded to a travel survey, a two-step analysis is conducted. The first step examines the effects of individual characteristics, travel experience and origin or destination features on students’ stated preferences (i.e. self-selected values assigned to personal attitudes). The second step analyses students’ travel mode choices, given their intrinsic mobility attitudes.

The results suggest that informing students about environmental issues increases their propensity to use sustainable mobility, leading to an average decrease in private transport usage of 5.8 per cent. Interestingly, improving the public transport service and promoting sustainable transport mobility have different impacts on individual campus areas. For campuses located in the city centre and in the historical hamlet, improvements in public transport are found to decrease solo driving by 3.3 per cent and 5.3 per cent, respectively. In suburban areas, this value increases to 9.5 per cent.

This work makes two contributions to the literature. First, it focuses on an unexplored setting, namely, that of a multi-campus university, with districts located in three different areas. This is used to explain how students are influenced by their travel experience and the cultural framework in which they are embedded. Second, the two-step analysis leads to a deeper understanding of the differences between attitudes and “intrinsic attitudes”, and their relative influence on the preferred alternative.